Nesting

Bonnie and I planned to go to the Venice Audubon Rookery early Tuesday morning. It’s about an hour’s drive from my home; the goal was to get a 6 am start and arrive at sunrise. Bon woke up to find a dead car battery… so we left a half hour later… which was not such a bad thing because it was windy and wickedly cold. Not cold like Chicago and its 19-inches of snow, but windy and cold enough for here. Okay, in reality, shy of 50 degrees. But I had on three layers including a Duluth hoodie and LL Bean jacket and wished I had two pairs of socks.

The rookery is in a suburban spot. It’s a small (I’m assuming manmade) pond with a nesting island of tangled Brazilian Pepper bushes (a non-native, invasive plant). The herons like it enough. We saw multiple pairs of Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, Cattle Egrets, Anhingas and Cormorants. Early on, Little Blue Herons flew in and out. A flock of Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks clamored from a nearby pond in a mobile home park.

We were the second and third photographers on scene. I used my lightweight Induro tripod, 300 mm lens and 2x extender. The shots posted here are cropped just a bit. A photographer from Arcadia (bundled in a down parka), then a dozen more folks with cameras and binoculars, soon joined us. A fellow from Massachusetts arrived wearing shorts. He admitted he was cold.

As soon as we spotted the first Great Blue Heron chick (little fuzzy ball with bright yellow eye and oversized beak), the dead battery and the wind and getting up at 5 didn’t matter at all.

Great Blue Heron, early morning

Meticulous nest-building

Mom, dad, junior

We later saw three chicks in the nest