Ruddy Turnstone Convention

Ruddy turnstones along the causeway beach.

Ruddy turnstone in winter plumage.

There's a place along the causeway from Titusville, Florida to Merritt Island NWR, just after the drawbridge, on the left, as you head toward the refuge, where there's a seaweed-covered bit of bay beach you can drive along. There are always large resting flocks of gulls and shorebirds there. And a few wading birds, too. The thing is, the birds are really close. You can drive right up to them and sit there taking photos or scanning with your binocs while they feed and snooze and loaf.

This place always has several budding bird photographers there with their cameras and long lenses, working the flocks. Even when the light is poor you can get really great bird photos because the birds are so dang close.

As I drove up to the spot on Thursday morning last week, I noticed two winter-plumage ruddy turnstones in the grassy strip between the sandy shore and the sandy parking lot where the cars (including mine) were parked or inching along at 2 mph. I stopped the car and tried to focus on the turnstones. But they came closer and closer until I could no longer focus on them. Then they went under the car! I moved the driver's-side rear-view mirror and saw that the turnstones were feeding in the wet tire tracks I'd made in the sand. It must have disturbed the sand enough to expose some food items. The turnstones fed in the tire tracks for a minute or so then ambled back across the grassy strip and down to the water line. Clearly these two turnstones were tuned in to this unusual foraging opportunity.


I drove 50 feet farther down the beach and another turnstone came out and circled around my tires, poking and picking in my car's tracks.

Smart birds—or at least very opportunistic.

Wood Stork Ankles

Wood storks. White plumage, long decurved bill, and a really lovely bald head covered in wart-like skin.

While driving back to Titusville, Florida on Sunday after enjoying a few hours at Merritt Island NWR (and voting six times in the Florida primary, which will only count for 3 votes) I ran into a small posse of wood storks lounging along the causeway.

I thought to myself, "White birds with black heads in bright sunshine against dark green grass. Huzzah! What a perfect opportunity to take a boatload of under- and over-exposed images!"

So I did that very thing. Somehow I did manage (accidentally) to take a couple of keepers. The rest will need an iPhoto makeover before they'll be eligible to be voted on to Hollywood.

A young wood stork, its neck still covered with feathers. Adults have featherless necks.

Then I saw a wood stork that was shorter than the others. It looked like Tom Cruise standing in a flock of Kelly McGillises, but without the height-giving phone book to stand on.

A closer look revealed that the stork was resting. On its ankles.

Did you know that the part of a bird's leg that we think of as the knee (though it bends backwards compared to human knees) is actually the bird's ankle? So this wood stork is resting on its heels.

The lower part of a bird's leg is the tarsometatarsus, a bone formed by the fusing (by our friend evolution) of the metatarsal and tarsal bones. What we see as a bird's foot is really its toes. Its foot and tarsus is the lower leg (or tarsometatarsus). Its upper leg corresponds to our shin. Its knee is up next to the body. Confused? Well think of it like this: birds are walking around on their tip-toes all the time. [special thanks to Science Chimp for that last analogy].

The noticeably short wood stork that I thought was Tom Cruise except that it wasn't jumping up and down on Oprah's couch.

The morning had been cold and in the warming mid-day sun several of the wood storks in the flock plopped down on their ankles. Were they just resting or was this a better way of soaking up the sun's warmth? Do you have a theory on that? If so, please share it with the rest of the class.

Space Coast Moment

Reddish egret on Black Point Wildlife Drive in Merritt Island NWR.

I am just back in the past few hours from Titusville, Florida, where I was attending the Space Coast Birding & Nature Festival. Florida in winter. . . man i could almost see buying some Bermuda shorts, a floppy hat, a Members Only windbreaker, and some golf clubs and hanging it up down there in the Sunshine State. Or maybe not just yet.

The Space Coast of Florida (the area around Cape Canaveral, epicenter of the NASA space program) could use as its marketing phrase: "It's Birdy as Heck Here!" There are huge flocks of American robins already preparing to move north. The sky is peppered with swooping tree swallows. Lines of ibises, cormorants, pelicans, spoonbills, and skeins of ducks look like stitching across the sky. Every bit of water hosts a wood stork, white ibis, coot, or gallinule. Bald eagles and osprey are so common as to elicit a yawn from the local birders. Yellow-rumped warblers tchup from every shrub and tree, joined by the occasional palm warbler.

Among the birds I encountered in Florida are several species I get to see just once or twice a year. Perhaps the most interesting such water bird is the reddish egret. It has an unusual hunting strategy—it walks along slowly in shallow water until it spies a school of fish. Then it chases the fish, trying to catch them by stabbing its bill into the shallow water. As it runs it looks something like a drunken sailor, legs and wings reaching out in all directions.



The reddish egret's color scheme is subtle but evocative—classic colors blended so well. I love the pink bill with a black tip. I got these few pictures of reddish egrets while in FL.


More about FL soonish. Right now, like an astronaut might experience coming back to Earth, I am in the midst of re-entry into my normal routine.