Pelicans and Wood Storks ... At Last!

What a wonderful day! We went on a dolphin watch cruise this morning in a Zodiac boat. A talkative Fish Crow sat in the rigging of another boat, muttering to itself as we waited to board. As the captain sped over the waves, we went airborne for a while before slamming into the trough with a BANG! Dick was hanging on to the rope as he sat on the inflated side of the Zodiac, and he's a little sore this evening.

After cruising for over an hour, we finally located a school of menhaden fish swimming in a ball, and the dolphins came in for the kill.

And the Pelicans arrived to share the bounty! I got better photos of the birds than the dolphins, and I'm sure everyone else wondered why I wasn't more focused on the water.

When it's important, the Pelicans know to show up. Otherwise, they must have someplace else to go. The folks at the dock said they are always there when fish come in with the boats. I am so much relieved to find them at last.

As we went up and down the shore, we saw only one stretch of green along the beach. No matter how long and hard you looked, there were only houses and high rises from horizon to horizon, except for Huntington Beach State Park. Along with the smaller Myrtle Beach State Park, I would bet that they are the only undeveloped beach front in the entire state of South Carolina.

When we returned to shore, we visited Huntington Beach and could have stayed forever. The boardwalks went out into the marsh, and just as the tide was turning we saw wonderful egrets, herons, plovers and sandpipers on the mudflats from closeup. I could identify the Semi-Palmated Plover (on the right here), but had to check the book for this White-rumped Sandpiper.

You can even see the leg band on this Great Egret.

But the real thrill was seeing a large group (at least 60 - 70) of Wood Storks, a federally endangered species!  One has been at the Anchorage Trail in Louisville this summer, and everyone has so excited. They don't belong in Kentucky, of course. I've seen them once in a while in Florida, but only in small numbers. Their flight profile is very distinctive, and the marsh at Huntington Beach was full of them, right next to the road.

Occasionally, a little bill clacking argument started...

The adults were feeding in the shallows using a method known as "grope feeding." They probe around on the bottom with open mouths, and when their sensitive beaks locate something edible, they snap it up, even this large blue crab!

Ornithologists waffle back and forth about whether Turkey Vultures are truly raptors or not. Sometimes, they decide the vultures are really part of the stork family. When you see the bald heads of these Wood Storks you can understand their confusion. Why would a bird that feeds in shallow water need to have a bald head? Could storks and vultures share a common ancestor waaay back that was a scavenger?

Atlantic Flyway

 

 

Here we are vacationing at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. As usual, my wonderful travel agent, Dick, booked us into a time share condo, and although we are in the heart of the gift shop area, we will have no problem finding the natural parts of South Carolina. We have noticed differences in the birds found on this beach, compared to Gulf Shores, south Georgia and Florida. For example, we have seen NO Pelicans at all! They have never been bothered by large numbers of people elsewhere. We will continue the search for them or an explanation for their absence.

 



We have found Ospreys soaring over the hotels however. In fact, this afternoon we saw SIX Ospreys in the sky at once! One of the field guides on local nature said there aren't a lot of Ospreys here. Why are we seeing so many of them then? Aha! We must be on the Atlantic Flyway and these birds are on their way to Florida or South America for the winter!

How about this spider? Click on the photos for enlargements. I just Googled "large South Carolina spider" and found a picture like this where the spider is identified as a "banana-golden-silk spider." Females are 3 inches, while the male is a mere 1/2 inch long. Female banana spiders (N. clavipes) have legs that are banded brown and orange with two feathery tufts or gaiters on the mid-segments of each pair legs except the third pair. The strong web of banana spiders is complex. It is a fine-meshed orb suspended in a maze of non-sticky “barrier webs.” They make big webs, about 3 feet wide, spun in a place best suited to take advantage of the flight paths of other insects. Some scientists suggest that the silk’s color serves a dual purpose: sunlit webs ensnare bees that are attracted to the bright yellow strands and in shady spots, the yellow blends in with background foliage, acting as camouflage. This one was just off the sidewalk leading into the Myrtle Beach State Park Visitor Center where it could be easily photographed.

 

Birds sometimes have strange names or names that are aptly descriptive. Insects have the same problem. I Googled "red and black wasp" and found that there is, in fact, an insect called the black and red wasp, as well as another called the black and white wasp. Since each article also carried a Latin name, I assume these are for real. This one mint bush attracted a great variety of wasps and bees.

While we've seen absolutely NO PELICANS so far, we have been surrounded by these beach pigeons. In fact, the restaurant at the pier tonight put a sign on the deck tables asking diners not to feed the birds. What? Sure enough, these evil eyed birds strolled around under our feet looking for handouts, or anything that dropped to the floor. There has to be a good reason for these birds to live on the beach in such numbers.

The Sanderlings are running races along the water's edge, as they always do, which is very reassuring.

Today's Ruddy Turnstone, however, was not looking in the wrack left by the high tide as usual. We found him on the fishing pier at the state park. I tell you, something is going on with the birds around here!

The butterflies are here in fantastic abundance though!  The Gulf Fritillary, one of my favorites, doesn't care that this is South Carolina. They were all over the state park. This Cloudless Sulphurs were all over too, in its one flight in late summer/early fall. They chased each other, fluttering around parks, gardens, and the edges of roads or beaches, even by the pool here at the condo. The male is a particularly dizzying flyer. As he searches for females, his yellow wings seemingly capturing the sunshine. More to come later...

Green Fire at Bernheim

Whoa!  I haven't posted to this blog for a month? Well, it's been a rough summer, with illness, refinishing the floors, a wedding and guests at our house for a week, and manning the Raptor Rehab booth at the state fair for 5 of 10 days. No wonder I'm tired! My husband is a great fan of Aldo Leopold, and studied at the Leopold Foundation to become a Land Ethic Leader, so last night he presented the Green Fire movie at Bernheim Forest. Many of the attendees were familiar with Leopold already, but agreed that they learned much about his life from this session. For example, did you know that Aldo Leopold and Isaac Bernheim (founder of the Forest) actually knew each other from working together at the United Nations? Once the projector was set up, I went out for a little stroll, since I haven't been to Bernheim much this summer.

The remains of Hurricane Isaac are expected to arrive in the Ohio Valley this weekend, and they weren't sure if the Blue Moon hike would be a go or no-go. Blue Moon? Just a song from the 1950's? No, a Blue Moon occurs when there are two full moons during the month. It was pretty cloudy by the time we left, but you could see a few bright beams in breaks of the cloud cover.

Lake Nevin is always a wonderful place to relax and meditate. Bernheim puts benches in good spots for their visitors who are tired and hot.

The lake is normally full of dragonflies diving at each other. Since this was towards the end of the day, most of them were gone, but I caught this one guy hovering over the shallow end of the lake. Ha! It's not often that I can catch one in flight!

The bees weren't ready to stop yet though. Hundred of them (honey bees, I think) visited these fragrant purple blooms. Darn, I should have looked at the name tag for the name of this flower.

While a different kind of bee checked out the milkweed. Wren Smith (our friend at Bernheim) keeps bees. I'll have to ask her about this one.

The summer flowers are pretty much done, but these asters shared space with a butterfly bush...

...while the last water lily bloomed in the pool outside the Garden Pavilion. We always enjoy a pleasant evening at Bernheim Forest and Arboretum, and Dick plans to return this afternoon for some volunteer time, while I head for the big Flea Market at the fairgrounds. To each his/her own!

Hhmmmmm

Earlier this summer, I had the joy of finding a Hummingbird nest in our back yard. This was a momentous event, since Hummingbirds never came to our yard until the last part of July. When I looked for it again, I could not find it, of course.

We sat on the patio this evening enjoying the cooler temps, and saw a female hummer slowing flying into the tree above our heads. Could it be the same bird? Sure, why not. As she slowed, we saw her land at a nest and start to feed the two little babies in it!  This photo shows their little pointy beaks over the edge, while the one above shows two little stubs of tails.

After a quick trip to the nearby nectar feeder, she came back to feed them again.

How wonderful! Our guests finally saw the nest too, and one said it looked like a frog on the branch, which is actually a pretty good description.

I Love Raptors!

If you have a passion for something, it's not really work, even though it takes hours of your time, and gallons of sweat. That's how I feel about volunteering at Raptor Rehabilitation of Kentucky. The reward comes when it's time to release one of the rehab birds back into the wild, and we have made some pretty spectacular releases in the last week. This Bald Eagle is 25 years old, and came with a broken wing, having been hit by a car. As the wing healed, we discovered that she also had lead poisoning, which causes neurological damage. They can forget how to eat or fly. After her wing healed we put her in a long flight cage, but she showed no interest in flying at all, and we feared that she would never fly again.

Two young Bald Eagles arrived in June and July, and joined her in the flight cage when they were well enough. One came from a downed nest in Land Between the Lakes, in Western Kentucky, while the other was found at the Ford Truck Plant in Louisville. It weighed less than 4 pounds and was starving to death. After watching them fly back and forth for a while, she started to fly again too. We all teared up to see her recovering after being inactive for so long. Sunday, we released all 3 birds at once down along the Ohio River in Western Kentucky. Our hope is that the adult will take the two youngsters "under her wing," so to speak, and help them learn to hunt successfully.

Cheer, applaud, cry...  It's a very emotional time. About 50 people met us at the site to join the caravan of volunteers who drove 3 hours to see the release. One family drove 2 hours from Indiana to watch. RROKI generally releases over 60% of the birds taken in for rehabilitation, which is a very good number.

Last weekend, as part of a program at Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve, we released 8 young Red Shouldered Hawks into the wild. Most were eager to leave the travel crate and bolt for the sky.

One didn't quite know what to do next, we we had to assist it a bit. This gave the audience a good chance to see the different markings on a young hawk compared to the adult we brought to the program.

As often happens, the resident Mockingbirds wasted no time in mobbing or chasing the young hawks as they looked for a place to land.

We also released a young Peregrine Falcon along the Ohio River near Louisville that weekend. It's wonderful to see them flying free again. We all pray that they will be able to find enough to eat and grow up to be successful adults with young of their own!  This week we are releasing several of the young Great Horned Owls in the evening, at the locations they were originally found. Our pair of young Black Vultures were human imprints and can't be released into the wild. But we found a raptor center in Texas which plans to train them for free flight programs, so we are delighted they have found a wonderful permanent home too. I love happy endings!

Water Meadows

What a summer! Extreme temperatures, topped by medical maladies for both Dick and I, have made this a not-so-fun year. From day to day, we don't know if we'll be able to get up and move around without discomfort and downright excruciating hip pain, so that we've both had to (gasp!) cancel some of our volunteer activities. Needless to say, we are both incredibly frustrated by the whole thing. Today, however, we were up to a short birding excursion at Hays Kennedy Park in nearby Prospect, KY.

The park has a long shallow pool of water which is habitat for dragonflies and shorebirds of different sorts. We were surprised to find any water in it at all today, given the drought and heat this summer. But the mudflats were being explored by noisy Killdeer. As anyone walked along the edge, they would call out ki-de, ki-de, ki-de, and fly off....

...circle around a few times, then settle back on the mud.

I've always admitted to difficulty identifying different shore birds, other than Killdeer. We saw some that were much smaller than the Killdeer, and they seem to have black bills and legs, just like the Sanderlings we see at the beach. Do we have Sanderlings in Kentucky, or are these some other kind of small shorebird?

Raptor Rehab has been releasing many of the birds that came in as chicks in the last few months, and today, we released a young Peregrine Falcon at Hays Kennedy Park, which was the real reason we went out in the middle of the hot afternoon. This young bird has already been banded, and a group of volunteers and raptor lovers attended this wonderful occasion.

These releases are the reason we volunteer in the first place!

Our son is getting married next month, so Dick decided this would be a good time to have our hardwood floors refinished. So in the midst of medical problems, he was cleaning out all the display cabinets. I wasn't really convinced it had to be done, until I saw the difference between exposed flooring and that under the carpet. Yeah, this is a good idea, but we haven't emptied these rooms since we moved in almost 34 years ago!

It's Too DARN HOT!!

Bee Balm

It's TOO DARN HOT! (Sounds like a good song title, doesn't it?) This 100+ degree weather is too much for me. Our Kentucky native flowers in the garden are tough though, and they are at the peak of their blooming season. We don't see many honey bees, but bee balm is aptly named. The bumblebees love it as they buzz from blossom to blossom.

Black-eyed Susan

I don't remember it getting so hot when I was a kid, but of course, back then, I didn't really care. No Internet or weather channel to tell me how hot it was, let alone the heat index of how hot it feels! I spent lots of time down over the side of the hill where we lived playing in the shade and catching poison ivy!

Grey-headed Coneflower

When I came home, we spent the evenings sitting on the driveway visiting with the other neighbors who didn't have air conditioning. No big deal, no one in our neighborhood had it. Mom used to make home-made orange sherbet in ice cube trays. YUM! I could walk to our town's swimming pool, and we didn't know about sun and skin cancer - we just had fun all afternoon, sitting on the concrete playing cards!

Catchfly

 I don't really have much to say while I wait for Toyota to finish the 60,000 checkup on my Prius, so I'll just share the beautiful flowers in our garden...

Rattlesnake Master

...Stay in the shade!

Purple Coneflower