Black Crowned Night Heron grooming

Black Crowned Night Heron


We've taken enough photos of this night heron standing, waiting for fish. We are moving on to his morning grooming. We have seen but not photographed a juvenile in the area and will be looking out for him.

Black Crowned Night Heron

Black Crowned Night Heron

Babies

Baby Tree Swallow (we think)




This was weird. A mother duck and her 6 ducklings were resting on our floating island. A cormorant also likes sunning himself there so he jumped up to join them. The mother sheltered the babies but they shared the island for a few minues.

Lake Neslon Update

 

 

 

 

The dam on Lake Nelson was fixed and with all the rain, the lake is full.
A big thanks for all who volunteered and helped with the repairs.

Before the dam was fixed, a goose used our floating island as a nest. We think it abandoned the nest, it only sat on it a few days. Now that the lake is back, we've had one cormorant on the lake and a few ducks have returned. We did get to take the boat out and ran into a nice deer at a stream that feeds the lake.

Great Blue Heron on Floating Island

Great Blue Heron on little green lake

We were happy to see the great blue heron fishing from our floating island when we woke up this morning.

Black Crowned Night Heron on Floating Island

Frequent readers of this blog will know that we put an anchored floating island out on the lake, put some plants on it, and hoped to have a little Galapagos Island off our dock. We've had a sandpiper or two, several turtles and eleven baby ducks who ate the expensive plants. Tonight, we were pleased that a night heron made a bouncy landing and fished for a while. We're also glad to see some plants growing back.

Birding on Flip Flop Friday

We relaxed a bit on our dock on National Flip Flop day. Some cedar waxwings were catching bugs over the lake. The mother oriole was looking for food to feed the babies that we can hear but not see high overhead. Some turtles got into the spirit and sunned themselves on the float island.

Two Waxwings


Female Baltimore Oriole

Great Blue Heron flying overhead

Blue Jay in the water feature

Three Turtles relaxing in the sun

Late Spring Birds

 

 

 

With the spring warbler migration ending and the weather warming up, we are spending more time in our backyard and less time going out birding.  Our feeders and birdbaths keep enough interesting birds in the area and Chris has become the Kool-aid mom for birds.

The baby ducks are growing, but all 11 and Mom still fit on the floating island and have consumed all the expensive plants we had on it.  We are waiting for baby orioles to appear.   The night heron keeps to himself and occasionally fishes from the dock.

Eleven Baby Ducks: Beat that Octomom

 

We are happy to see our little floating island planter getting some use.  So far, we've had just a pair of sandpipers, a lone duck or turtle on it.  At dusk today, we saw the mother and all the baby ducks on it.  It's hard to count them on the island, but all 11 were on it.  She must be a very good mother.

 

Sandy, the spotted sandpiper

 

We do a variety of things to attract birds to our property with special feeders for goldfinches, orioles, woodpeckers, and a general seed feeder. We also like to make sure birds have places to live or at least perch.

Our latest creation is an Islandscapes floating island planter.  It is a small planter about 2x3 feet with a few aquatic plants. We were surprised to see a spotted sandpiper on it the first day.  Here's a photo of Sandy, the spotted sandpiper.  We actually don't know if it's a male or female, so Sandy works for both.  At times there have been two sandpipers on the island at one time, and one evening it looked like they were settling down to spend the night. 

We love going to small, private islands ourselves, so we're glad we enticed these little sandpipers to enjoy the little private island we created.  We never guessed they would be our first visitors.  We'll be keeping our eyes on this to see if turtles, cormorants, ducks or kingfishers are also attracted to it.