Yesterday, Tuesday, I spent a few hours with Rick at the Six Mile Slough. This reserve has a long boardwalk and allows those with patience to see and hear many different species of birds. It also gives one a great example of a water managed slough and its natural eco system.
We'll start off with a White Ibis. These large birds and often found aerating people's lawns for grubs and other subterranean bugs & stuff. Note the large feet.
Next is the Black Crowned Night Heron, not usually so willing to pose for a few pictures.
Here he is in an attack pose and I really thought he might be getting ready to fly away. Rick reminded me that many birds poop just before taking off. This one didn't and didn't, so there were many more photo ops...
This slough has a lot of old cypress trees, and many opportunistic ferns and air plants that just need a foothold to grow well. Here's a nice new fern, and if you look higher on the cypress, you'll see some air plants growing.
Cypress have interesting bases, at one time harvested to make weird shaped table tops...
This is a very small spider [close to actual size in this picture, click on picture to see it larger] checking out his web.
Cypress trees have strange root growths called knees. There is much discussion as to their use; I think they let us imagine a world without adults: could this just be a choir of strange beings?
Parks, preserves, sloughs and other damp areas set aside for nature to unfold as it should, often have serious enemies. Land developers come to mind, but that's another story. In this case, the enemy is the wild pig.
They rout out plants and roots, turning the undergrowth into mud that will take years to develop new growth. Not only causing an eyesore, but serious damage to the eco system of the slough. Normally, these protected areas would be large enough to support a healthy population of predators to take care of the pig problem. At the slough, these pigs have to be caught and removed, a never ending process due to the pig's prolific reproduction rate.
I've never seen any wild pigs here before, so this day was special. These little piglets number four of the more than ten that we counted, with more hidden in the bush.
Nearby, I shot one of the two sows in the area. In another four months or so, they'll each have another litter of a half dozen or so. You can just see that the area in front of the sow is being turned into mud: not good.
After about 3 hours we left the slough to show Rick the natural area being protected with our 'gated community'.
Almost all my bird pictures are shot with a telephoto lens, and often cropped to make the final picture that you see. This shot was made with a fairly short telephoto [90mm] and not cropped: It gives you an idea of what I see from the boardwalk. The shape and sound is unmistakeable: Woodie Woodpecker, normally referred to as a Pileated Woodpecker.
Same lens, heavily cropped: same woodpecker flying through the trees.
Woodpeckers fly isn a particular way: they flap their wings like mad for a while, then glide like a bullet or dart, before resuming their fast flapping. This is my first picture of the woodpecker just acting like a dart.
As we left the preserve at our place, here's a very busy Purple Martin community. Note the outside guard rails to protect the housing development from hawk and other predators.
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