Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Horseshoe Beach, FL & Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Preserve


Monday, November 6th we returned to Lower Suwannee and it was low tide and we saw little to no birds in the morning. We made a second stop at the place where we saw the swimming raccoons and this time there were two Pied-billed Grebes. They are solitary birds so it’s a treat to see 2 together.
 people collecting oysters


 low tide with hundreds of crabs
 Greg





 all crabs....



 Belted Kingfisher with a fish








Swamp Sparrow
 Le' Coon Cafe - cute dumpster graffiti

 Pied-billed Grebe
 Pied-billed Grebes

 Yellow-rumped Warbler
 Yellow-rumped Warbler
 Yellow-rumped Warbler
bloated dead alligator---belly-up

Went to lunch at Horseshoe Beach which is a cute beach town. There were 2 choices for lunch and we choose the Shrimp Boat. One would think there would be a lot of shrimp on the menu, but for lunch they had a fried shrimp sandwich. It was tasty. Greg ordered the fried oyster basket and he said it was good as well.

 Fried Shrimp Sandwich
 Fried Oyster basket



After lunch we drove around the adorable beach town and then stopped for some shore birding. We saw 2 skimmers – what impressive bills! It was great to see them up close since when we first saw them a couple of days ago. They were very far out on an island and we didn’t get a great look at the one that was there.






 tree full of Egrets

 Cormorants
 Osprey

 Sandwich Tern, Forster's Tern, Royal Terns




 Semi-palmated Sandpiper, Wilson's Plover & Wimbrel
 Black Skimmer & Forster's Tern having "bill envy"



 the second one has his bill open



 dolphins feeding
 huge powerful splash by the dolphin




 they just returned with their catch of the day

 Eurasian Collared Dove
 Eurasian Collared Dove
 Black Skimmers coming in for a landing





 unique houses

On the drive home a Fox Squirrel ran in front of our car and scampered off into the woods. Greg got a couple of decent shots of it before it disappeared. Greg used to see them when he used to cycle and after several tries to take me to see them I finally did get to see some. Not a common squirrel and quite unique looking.
 Fox Squirrel

We also walked the boardwalk to the Suwannee River here in the RV Park before dinner.




Tomorrow we will take another day off.

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