Marge says:
I'm going back to the week of June 16th, at Green Cay, the week before Elissa's first post, because there was an abundance of awesome bird and other animal behavior. I walked with Dee, 2 mornings that week.

6/17/08: We saw a bobcat! It was coming from under the boardwalk on the 1 mile loop and posed for us for a few minutes before walking away along the ditch of the 1st service walkway. Neither of us had brought a camera.
We checked the redwing blackbird nest close to the boards a little farther on, where the week before there were 4 hatchlings in the nest with beaks open and begging for food. Now, after the heavy rains of the past few days, there were 2 youngsters perched on a sideways stalk within the pickeral reed and we could see the head of one chick in the nest. Couldn't tell if the one in the nest was alive. The parents, usually in close attendance, were not seen.

6/18/08 Hazy, humid at 6:10 am. Heavy rains last night. We always look for what we've termed the "sentinal", an anhinga on the first dead palm on the left at the start of 1 mi loop. An anhinga was there with wings outstretched looking beautiful.
The amazing sight today was that the wood storks had taken over most of the dead trees along the 1 mi side. There were between 5 and 20 wood storks on each dead tree. We didn't see any on the ground. They just perched, very still, on the dead branches. We saw about 40 total in the trees. I wonder if that's part of their mating behavior?

Egrets, both snowy and great were massed in first one water area wall to wall, and then at some signal that we humans couldn't hear or see, they all, in an orderly fashion, flew off to another water area. Many egrets on railings in massed areas and lots of posturing and lacey feathering.

Grackles were very loud. Continuous chirping of both males and females. Females with dipping of feet in the water behavior.

Redwing blackbird nest is now down to 1 young surviving, still perched on the same broken stalk of pickeral reed.

6/28/08 Rained again last night. Elissa and I checked the redwing blackbird nest and sadly, the last chick is gone. I guess the heavy rains washed it away. There was one woodstork on a few of the dead trees, but nothing like last week.
The grackles were massed in the fireflag areas and took off as one, noisily chirping and looking like a flock of bats as the flew over our heads. Females still with dipping of feet in water behavior.
Also saw an adult black necked stilt with a chick looking to be about 2 weeks old.

Sunday, June 29, 2008 - T-80 H-83

Elissa says: This is a new Blog about birds and other animal sightings at nature preserves in south Florida. We'll begin with happenings at Green Cay.

Today Marge & I went on our usual walk at Green Cay. It was about 6:15am. We were the 2nd car in the lot. The air was cool but by the time we left around 7:30am is was getting unbearable. Saw lots of great egrets, snowy egrets, and green herons, 1 black-crowned night heron, and 1 black-bellied whistling duck.