31 January Birding at Harnes Marsh

After our visit the evening before, we decided to spend the day at Harns Marsh exploring all the trails. The trails didn't disappoint with birds of all kinds everywhere.

Pie billed grebes with young

Drying its wings...

A Baker's Dozen

This was our first spotting of a loggerhead shrike. It's always exciting to spot a bird for the first time.

We spotted two different groups of sandhill cranes on our walk.

In between the amazing birds, we enjoyed the caches on the trail. One of the hiders put extra effort into their hides and decorated the ammo cans.

Just after finding the turtle ammo can, we made our first sighting of a broad-winged hawk. It was in a tree almost directly above a different cache.

We always joke about how appropriate the name cattle egret is for these birds since we always seem to see them in fields where there is livestock grazing. We may need to re-think as this afternoon there were quite a few in a nearby field, and there are no cattle at Harnes Marsh.

I would have passed by this green heron tucked away in the brush if Ali hadn't noticed it. Green herons cover a wide range including our home area, but we generally spot them only once or twice a year.

It's hard to imagine just how plentiful food sources must be in the marsh to support so many birds.

A few of the caches we found had been replaced. A few were in really rough shape. Surprisingly, many of them were survirvors that made it through the hurricane and flooding. We had a great time on a perfect vacation day.

We made one last stop before dinner at a cache behind a shopping center. It's not our usual location of choice for caching, but Ali noticed the logs were very positive. It seemed to be the shopping center development left a natural area at the property edge. I wasn't expecting too much and left my camera behind (also didn't want to look like a total geek). We were happily surprised to see an oasis for shorebirds with plenty of them in the area.