For the last few days we have been anchored in 'Horseshoe Bay' on Sanibel Island near the Ding Darling Preserve.
Typically we see a wide range of birds here, but this visit they seem somewhat scarce.
We did dinghy into the Sanibel Bayou today and had a great 'drift' through a few miles. You must go in at near high tide and when the wind and current are right, which they were today, you can turn off the outboard and just drift. It is a great way to observe birds and other wildlife.
We saw a number of ospreys hunting. It is interesting to watch them as they line up on a fish at an altitude of 100-200 feet and then do a straight dive down. They are successful most of the time and then fly off to a tree or return to the nest to eat. Ospreys will ONLY eat fish - they say that mice can have a nest at the base of a tree with an Osprey nest, and the birds will leave them alone. This is not true of eagles, who will eat just about anything.
When they are eating, they are somewhat easier to photograph because they do not want to carry the fish to another location. The bird in the following picture had already moved once and presented what we call a 'butt shot', but his perch was precarious, so he was spreading his wings for balance - it makes the shot somewhat interesting. If you look closely under the branch he is perched on, you can see the fish.
Probably our most interesting encounter was a group of 5-6 manatees that were hanging out in one area - probably eating some grass there. We floated around them for some time and they kept come up around our boat. They are hard to photograph because they are not on the surface for long and you do not know where they will next surface, but the following picture is decent.
The bayou, of course is comprised of mostly mangroves. The yellow leaf in the following picture is a 'sacrificial' leaf. The water here is brackish (part salt/part fresh) and most plants could not live here. The red mangroves do absorb more salt than they can tolerate, but they concentrate excess salt in select leafs, and then drop those leaves- quite an ingenious system.
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| Yellow 'sacrificial' leaf |
The following picture shows why red mangroves were called 'walking' trees by the native Americans in this area.
Tomorrow we plan to head a few miles north to Pelican Bay on Cayo Costa, one of our favorite anchorages on the west coast of Florida.
Tom
Anchored Horseshoe Bay
Sanibel Island, FL
Map Cruise 21012-13
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