Eagle at sunset
Our RV site at Gulf Waters RV Resort is right on a man-made pond. It is a beautiful site which we are enjoying very much. We knew that the view – of the pond, the clubhouse and the fountain – would be a constant source of pleasure and serenity. But we didn’t expect to have a front-row seat to some pretty exotic bird-watching.
A few weeks back we went to the Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, which bills itself as a great place to see exotic waterfowl. We enjoyed the trip, but didn’t see many memorable birds. Our little pond, on the other hand, has been a stage for frequent, surprising appearances of birds that I have either never seen before or never seen so nearby. The stork (at the right) is one of the most surprising. I didn’t know that storks inhabited this area. In fact, I kind of believed that storks were mythological creatures that only existed in stories to deliver babies.
Just in the past week we also had egrets, cranes, ducks, pelicans (both white and gray) and cormorants in our little pond. But the most surprising bird of all was a bald-headed eagle. It appears to be an adolescent, not huge but very beautiful. He is in the park nearly every day, sometimes fishing from the pond. One morning last week as I exited the RV with the dogs to take them on their morning walk I was surprised to see the bald eagle on the grass near the edge of the pond, eating a fish. He was no more than 100 feet away. He flew off, fish in talons, when the dogs got too close, but honored us with a fly-by: he circled the lake, then flew directly over us at a height of 20 feet. He gave the dogs the evil eye.
I think he was trying to decide if he could carry Rusty off.
Crane
Pelicans
Stork
Egrets