MLK Weekend

OK, a few non-dolphin pictures now, videos and pictures of dolphins to follow in later posts.

Much of Saturday afternoon was spent on errands (picking out some new furniture), but we were done well before sunset.  We saw dolphins close in to shore and spent some time chasing them down the beach.  It was hard to get actual photos of them, but it was fun to keep pace with them and try to guess where and when they'd surface.  I felt like my dynamic heart rate training on the treadmill paid off.

And the sky was pretty darn magnificent anyway.

Sunday morning I biked to the store and got some water - there's this wonderful machine where you can refill your gallon jug with reclaimed purified water for a very reasonable price.  I love that.

Later in the day, we went swimming.  But it was a bit chilly.

And again we saw fins: time to go into dolphin-paparazzi mode!!!

More walks on the beach.

West end of an east-bound egret.

Dolphin Hunters

Sandpiper (?) with small item in beak

Sunset

On Monday, I got up early and skated out to the lighthouse and back, stopping for coffee at the midway point.  Pro tip: Skating with a cup of coffee in hand is a great ice-breaker.

Later in the day, we went to a small wildlife refuge area.

We saw anhingas, herons (little blue, great blue, and tricolor), egrets, ibises, moorhens, butterflies, a turtle, a snake, and an alligator.  Plus additional birds we could not identify.

Anhinga drying its wings

I think I finally understand how to tell anhingas and cormorants apart.  First of all, anhingas are more common in Florida, and cormorants are more common in the Northeast - so you can play the odds to some extent.  Cormorants have a hook at the end of the beak (rather than the spear tip of the anhinga).  If it has white on the wings, it is an anhinga - cormorants are all black.  And the cormorant has a much shorter tail.

(The similarities of course are: long snaky neck and tendency to sit around on branches drying its wings because the feathers aren't waterproof.)

Anole on partly burned palm tree

Supposedly the number of inches between a gator's eyes and nostrils is a rough indication of the gator's overall length, in feet.  Using that method, my companions estimated this alligator was 6 feet long.

Alligator.  I believe that's a turtle head poking up, off to the right.  

Somehow, I didn't really get the urge to go any closer.

Little blue heron - they go through some pretty radical changes in appearance from juvenile to adult,
but apparently one dead giveaway is the bluish beak, tipped with black.

Meanwhile, the sky overhead filled with birds - they swarmed like insects.

White peacock butterfly

Turtle

This guy was well hidden, until he
gave himself away with a raucous cry