Our local photography club organized an expedition to Viera Wetlands yesterday.  It was one of our larger outings, with 8 people from the group there, including one new member.  We arrived just after sunrise and spent a little over 2 hours exploring the main site, and also took a quick tour of the click ponds.

Great Blue Heron: These birds aren’t nesting yet, but they do seem to be reserving their spots.

Wow – what a day for avian variety and nature lovers!  The weather was quite nice too – sunny with temperatures in the 50s.  There isn’t much nesting going on yet, but we did see an amazing number of both year-round and winter visitor species.    Several of these birds are difficult to spot and / or photograph well and it helps to make multiple circuits of the wetlands. It also really helps to have multiple sets of eyes watching for and pointing out interesting things.  About the only thing we struck out on was  the River Otters, but we did hear others talking about them – so they were around somewhere.

Belted Kingfisher: There were several of these at Viera Wetlands yesterday. They generally stayed out in the middle of the cells and so were hard to photograph.

Here’s a list of birds we spotted:  American Bittern, Anhinga, Belted Kingfisher, Blue Wing Teal, Coot, Double Crested Cormorant, Glossy Ibis, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Green Wing Teal, Little Blue Heron, Little Egret, Hooded Merganser, Common Moorhen, Northern Harrier, Northern Shoveler, Red Shouldered Hawk, Gulls, Snowy Egret, Tricolored Heron, Wilson’s (or Common?) Snipe, White Ibis, Wood Stork,  and others that I probably forgot or that we still have to identify.

Anhinga

If you haven’t been to Viera Wetlands recently, you really ought to check it out.

You can click on these photos to go to Flickr where you can look at larger versions.  You can see more of my photos from Viera Wetlands in this set on Flickr.  You can also visit our photography club’s group photo pool on Flickr here.

© 2011, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.