Spring has sprung and things are getting busy!

All the citrus trees are loaded with fruit, as this orange shows with last year's fruit and the start of this year's crop.

Click on the picture and watch the little owl's eyes on the snake! (These pictures were shot at 8 frames per second, so this happened in about a half of a second)

I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to get one the mature great horned owls bringing a tasty snake offering to the the two nestling owls. Actually at this stage they are now "branchlings". The term used to denote that the young owls are venturing out on the surrounding tree branches, but are not flying yet(fledglings).

Here's a shot of each of them on their branches today.

Still have ospreys and herons on nests, but it's fishing time so I can't check them as regularly as I'd like. Between the trout, which have really turned on in the past 10 days, spanish mackerel which are all over the bay and the bream which are destroying fly rod poppers...it time to go to work. If you haven't booked your tarpon days get with me. It looks like they may start early!

Mom's Back!

When I stopped by at lunch today, so had she!

Eagle attack!

I'm fortunate to have two great horned owl nests to monitor and photograph. When I checked on one this morning, I saw a large bird sitting next to the nest. My first thought was "the chick/chicks have pushed the adult out of the nest". But as I got closer, I could tell that it wasn't an owl. It was a juvenile bald eagle and there wasn't an adult owl in sight.

The eagle sat starring at the nest for about 30 minutes before leaving and the entire time the owlet did not move(see light colored lump in the nest in the picture above). Once the eagle flew on the owlet's head popped up and he started looking about.

That was early this morning. I've checked on the nest 2 more times, but I've yet to see an adult owl. I'm afraid the eagle may have attacked the owl on the nest, but I guess I'll have to wait awhile to know.

While I was working on this update a neighbor called to tell me there were 5 or 6 large birds screaming and fighting between his house and the bay. I hurried over and parked a couple of hundred yards back in the woods. I could hear eagles fighting but, unfortunately the trees were too thick to get a picture of the 4 juvenile eagles trying to take a fish away from a 5th bird. The one with the fish was shielding it from the marauders with its wings and screaming it's head off!

Eventually the attackers saw me and headed out over the bay, while the 5th eagle took his fish deeper into the woods.

We have a bumper crop of eagles this year and like most youngsters these are into everything in sight.

It looks like the herons have eggs in their nest

After seeing the heron in the nest a couple of weeks ago, they went AWOL until this weekend. This morning, they were preening away when I arrived.

Then the male was sent off for additional building materials to complete the nest upgrade from last year.

Of course what he selected and what she had in mind required considerable discussion and viewing from many diffent angles.

Finally she agreed that it would work.

I'll keep you posted on the herons along with the osprey and great horned owl nests which are all within a couple hundred yards of each other.