Day 14 Captiva 2019

Saturday, Feb 16
Today we are having our Valentine celebration exchanging cards throughout the day...with our morning coffee, lunch, afternoon cocktails, and dinner.

We left about 8:30am for an hour drive through Ding Darling Wildlife Reserve.  Photos below of birds we saw …..my favorite of all is the little Green Heron.

 One of the best sights were  several Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets sunning at the tippy top of trees.

We enjoyed our drive and seeing so many beautiful birds. Back at the cottage, we had lunch of egg, cheese and sausage wraps with tomato salsa.

For our special Valentine dinner,  Al grilled delicious steaks and I prepared roasted  Rosemary garlic potatoes and arugula salad with my own vinaigrette dressing .  We enjoyed dinner with glasses of wine.

Day 34 on Captiva

Another trip to Ding Darling this morning about 9:00 am.  This morning we enjoyed seeing White Pelicans (no sign of the African one), Roseate Spoonbills, many shore birds, an immature night heron,  and more of the alligators (no photos today). I will begin with a video of the White Pelicans preening on the sand bar:
(If you reading this in an email, go to my blog(link at bottom) and click on the videos to view.)

 Have you seen the African today?

 Can't you forget that big bird?   We are just as interesting.

 

 

 And now we add in some Roseate Spoonbills:

 There were 3 sleeping....

 One looked up.....

 Another looked up.....

And then there were 4......

Back to sleep.

 

 One off for a stroll....

 Have you seen the African Pelican that everyone is looking for?

Guess she has gone......so I am off too!

 

Other birds:

 Tri-colored Heron

 Ibis

Three Ibis and Reflections

 

On the way out, we saw this Great Blue Heron.

And then we spotted this Immature Heron who was posing on the side of the drive.

 

That's enough for this post. Day 34 to be continued in another post.

Day 31 Post 2 White Pelicans

At DDNWR today, we saw a great many White Pelicans and had fun watching many in flight, feeding  and sunning on the mud flats.   Even though we did not actually see the Great White Pelican, she was there at the same time we were but we did not spot her in time.  I do want to share some of our photographs:

 Sky was filled with flying White Pelicans.

 Island was crowded with White Pelicans.

 Pelicans were busy flying on and off the islands.

 Coming in for a landing.

 And then taking off to other places.