Sweet Saturday

The sun is back and I am grateful .....and..... I can finally venture out and do some birding. Today's agenda: Meet up with Dottie and go to Six Miles Cypress Slough - sounds like a good plan.

One of our first sighting was by the parking lot - a Yellow-throated Warbler - now, that's a sweet bird to feast your eyes on.

 Then we were granted great views of a few Carolina Wren - singing and jumping/flying to/fro branches.

 We also saw and heard several Blue-gray Gnatcatchers - talk about fast little bullets, they sure are very entertaining.

After a bit we headed back south and before parting ways Dottie mentioned some of the ducks that recently landed near the Golf Course at Shell Point - we opted to check them out.

I like to see ducks and I am excited that soon more will make their way back for the winter and we'll get to enjoy them again.

 There was a nice bunch, we counted 27 Mottled Ducks, 2 Mallards and 1 Blue-winged Teal, they all shared a common area.

 Mottled Ducks have been mixing with other ducks and it's the reason why some of them look really different from others.

There were small bodies of water in low lying areas and I guess we can be thankful for the rain.

The ducks were really feeling ducky about all of this - so much so that they couldn't decide which side to settle on, so they often traded sides with one another.

 After getting our fill with down we started heading out when we spotted some shorebirds in the grass fields...need to investigate!

 Dowitchers! We started watching them when all of a sudden they all took off with a couple of Killdeers in tow. We could only watch and wait.

 They flew several loops around, all together in beautiful harmony. They flew quietly except for the Killdeers

 They finally stopped flying and landed near the duck 'ponds'. I originally thought them to be Long-billed since they were found in fresh water however because we are so close to 'shore' and the fact that their shape is slightly different makes them Short-billed Dowitcher.

See - isn't great that we've had all this rain lately? It certainly provided for many creatures in need. Thanks for reading - here is my E-bird list for the Slough and for the Shell Point area.