It looks like some nicer weather has hit the north country. Some of the ice is out and lots of the snow has melted. The woodcock are up and doing their mating flights and big birds, such as eagles, osprey and hawks, are on eggs.
They do this so they have something to catch for their young just as their prey species start getting their young out and about.
Down here in Sanibel the eagles have already fledged and the osprey are about to jump ship. There are three young in the nest by the lighthouse that are as big as their parents.
There seems to be lots of fish in the ocean and these kids are well fed.
I’ve been seeing lots of turtles and snakes this year. The tortoise that visits Karen while she reads on her bench has come out the last couple of days to eat a little grass.
It’s a large gopher tortoise that has a hole under the maintenance shed by the lighthouse.
This large guy has been here every year we have come to visit, which is more than twenty now.
We were coming up from the beach the other day and saw a large black snake sunning on the bronze plaque in the flower garden next to the walkway.
We stopped to look at it more closely as it tasted the air with its tongue. A lady came up behind us and asked what we were looking at.
When we told her it was a nice snake, she went on by telling us that she did not do well with snakes or bugs.
Back to the fish in the ocean…Kerry Rogers and his wife Mary Jane made a return visit to Florida after going back home where there was still snow and ice.
They came back down here to see if the fish bite any better when the water is warmer.
Kerry took me out on the sand bar by the causeway a couple mornings and it was a blast.
The first morning, in the dark, we waded out to our belt lines and caught several ladyfish before the sun came up and several more in the next hour.
The fish were not more than twenty inches long but great fighters and jumpers on a fly rod.
They are called “poor man’s tarpon” because of their jumping ability.
Kerry had tied a few new flies while he was up home and these fish ate the first fly right off the hook. It’s a good thing he had more.
We took a few pictures of each other’s fish before we released them.
We went out another morning and a friend of his, Alan, also a fly fisherman, joined us.
While walking out in the dark that morning I had a fish bump right into my leg, then a small stingray hit me in the ankle.
The wind was blowing quite hard at us, making it harder to throw out the fly line.
I was first up and caught a nice snook on the second cast that put up a good fight before coming in hand.
This was the first snook I had ever caught so a few photos were taken before it was released.
Then I caught a ladyfish. After that, Kerry caught a mystery fish that neither of us knew what it was.
The sunrise was beautiful over Fort Meyers both mornings so I took a few photos of it.
The birding has been slow, to say the least. Yesterday (4/19) I saw only one warbler and a prairie that had an injured leg.
More birds are showing up on the beach as the number of people goes down.
On Easter Sunday it was wall-to-wall people and not much room for a bird on the beach. I had never seen that many people on the beach before.
Now that most of them have left, the birds are returning and some snowy plovers have started to nest.
The black-bellied plovers, dunlin and ruddy turnstones are all starting to color up from their winter plumage.
A few red knots are mixing in with the sanderlings on the beach but I haven’t seen a banded one yet.
Up at the lighthouse one morning it was flycatcher day.
First to show up was an eastern kingbird and soon after a couple of gray kingbirds…then three.
That was at approximately 9 a.m. but by 11 a.m I saw a long-tailed bird fly across an opening in the trail and then back to a perch. It was a scissor-tailed flycatcher which I had only seen once before.
Then its mate flew in and all the flycatchers were in one tree together.
The male has beautiful pink color under the wings going back toward its long tail. I found a couple other birders and let them know that the bird was around.
Most of them got to see it before it left the area. It’s the best bird of the trip so far.
One more week in the sunny south… but that’s another story. See ya.