Tag Archive | Birds
Cultivating a Future Naturalist
“Hi! Hi!”, I hear my 16-month-old granddaughter say excitedly in our Florida room. Wondering who she was talking to, I look into the room to see her face to face with a young eastern gray squirrel that climbed on the window ledge to peer into our house. The squirrel seemed as enchanted to see my […]
Snowy Egret Goes Surf Fishing
I have observed egrets for decades. I have seen them hunting in saltwater marshes, freshwater wetlands as well as in the shallows of ponds and streams. To my surprise I saw a snowy egret wading in the ocean waves lapping the shore where it ate small fish caught in the surf at Cocoa Beach in […]
A Duck That Nests in Trees
In pine barren wetlands, on New York’s Long Island, where black gum and red maple trees dominate the landscape, a mother wood duck calls to her ducklings from the edge of a small pond. The ducklings are only a day old and covered in down. They are still in the nesting cavity of an old […]
Boat-tailed Grackles Evoke Nostalgia
One of my fondest memories is being greeted by the calls of boat-tailed grackles at the Florida welcome center after driving nearly a thousand miles from New York. The calls along with the warm Florida sunshine signified an escape from the cold wintry weather of the north and the start of our family vacation. Boat-tailed […]
Falcated Teal
This east Asian duck nests in eastern Russia and northern China. It winters in southeast Asia including parts of India, south China and Vietnam. This duck’s prime habitats are lakes, ponds, wetlands and lagoons within forests where it dines on shore plants, aquatic vegetation, seeds and the occasional mollusk. Due to high levels of hunting […]
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