March 13, 2014

Today was awesome! I went to Larry & Penny Thompson Memorial Park, next door to ZooMiami. I had only 50 minutes before I needed to head out to work, which gave me just enough time to walk around the large lake there. Plenty of unoccupied nests, but no confirmed breeding activity. I saw a lot of species and I'll definitely need to return to explore all the wooded areas.

A Turkey Vulture demonstrating Staffelmauser, the German word for sequential molt. Most birds only grow their flight feathers once per year. Some drop all their feathers at once and become flightless for a while, but others molt sequentially in order to maintain their flying ability, as seen here.

Red-bellied Woodpecker trying not to look responsible for those holes in the tree (but he is).

Double-crested Cormorant. They don't have as much waterproofing oil on their feathers as other birds so that they can sink underwater more easily and catch fish.

Red-winged Blackbird.

The highlight of the day: a Bald Eagle! Sorry for the terrible quality; I spent so much time squinting my eyes as he flew towards me, thinking "What is that?" that I only got this one photo.

I had a hard time identifying this guy, but I eventually settled on Palm Warbler. I'll come back to this to make sure.

Not sure if all of these guys are Ring-billed Gulls, but at least one of them is (the guy on the center-right facing to the left with the black spot on his bill).

Osprey

Another new species for the blog: Brown Thrasher. They're related to mockingbirds and like mockingbirds, they have very impressive singing.