Day 5 Avi & Heidi’s Crazy Adventure (aka Project Carnivores)

 

Purple Gallinule left (ignore the eyes, he has his nictating membrane closed, i.e. his inner eyelid) and Gray-headed Swamphens on right (invasive species that are slowly pushing out the Purple Gallinules). You can easily tell them apart by a) Purple Gallinules have a candy corn beak with yellow at the tip and b) Purple Gallinule have yellow legs & feet.

Today’s adventure took us to Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive, which we attempted to visit yesterday but the drive was a) closed to vehicles until April and b) packed with people who were looking for a nature walk.  We went back today at 7am and had the place to ourselves… literally, the only other non-employee we saw was a bike rider that stopped to ask us why there was a lock on the gate 😳 

Wilson’s Snipe

Anhinga

Osprey with the “Catch of the Day”

Great Blue Heron with another “Catch of the Day”. It looks like it is stuck in his throat in the last picture.

Little Blue Heron on left and Tri-colored Heron on right. Little Blues have gray legs and a blue beak, Tri-colored have yellow legs, yellow at the base of the beak by the eye, and white markings on its neck and belly with brown on its back.

Fortunately we found a workman in a pickup truck and he explained that the gate was supposed to be locked in the morning, but we could stay and call him when we were ready to leave.  So, we literally got to bird all by ourselves 😁. Just us, and 12 alligators 🐊, 10 of which were in/near the water and 2 which were on our road…which we had to get past to get to the gate… So today we learned that [luckily] alligators do not just lunge and eat anything that passes in front of them.

The road looks wider than it was (it was single lane). The gators didn’t even flinch. They were way too close for comfort though.