You can sometimes hear them before you see them: Sweet but incessant cries of early life, calling for food, warmth, attention. If you’re lucky — and in the right place — you get a look at the first chicks of the season, which can be found all across Florida this month where the warm temperatures get the breeding season off to an early start.
The photos above, (from left to right), include a weeks-old Wood Stork, a Great Egret so new its feathers are nothing but fuzz, a Sandhill Crane already up and walking and a very young Anhinga, calling for food.
A Great Egret carries a branch to its nest
We spent the past six weeks roaming Florida on a spring-time birding trip. The nesting and breeding season is still many weeks away farther north, but here it’s in full swing for large coastal birds. You can see Egrets and Herons hauling sticks and branches across the marshes, and Wood Storks in the midst of their mating rituals. We witnessed the first generation of Anhingas, Cormorants and other new hatchlings in the nest, then perking up, and finally standing, walking and attempting to fly.
Florida is home to a sub-species of Sandhill Crane that never migrates.
Ocracoke Island in Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Anders got photos of a Great Egret walking through a puddle near the bathhouse. (Cold showers only at Ocracoke, so hooray for the Airstream’s propane water heater.)
I spotted the hawk from about 50 feet away, perched on a dead tree where he could watch over the Central Florida marsh as if he ruled the place.
As the climate has changed, the Ibis has slowly expanded its reach. You can find them as far north as the Carolinas, depending on the season, as this map from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology shows.
They’re not hard to spot; that’s partly because of their long, pink beaks they use to sift for crustaceans, fish and insects, and partly because they’re rarely alone. They fly, feed – and just hang out – in groups of dozens of birds.
