I thought I'd start a thread for March ... please share any photo's of the birds that you spot in your area of the world. My husband and I took a drive @ 45 minutes south to the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge yesterday and I was able to get a couple of photo's.
At the visitor's center they have an area where they feed the birds. We spotted a few Painted Bunting's but there were a lot of other birds around eating seed too. The bunting's are a shy bird and flit to cover very quickly. This photo is a bit dark because the little guy flew to the shrubbery.
Painted Bunting, male:
After the visitor's center we went to the Haulover Canal area to see the Manatees (which always congregate in an area near the docks where boaters come and go) and there are always Vulture's in the trees in this area too; one posed for a photo.
American Black Vulture:
We have lots of Ospreys here in Florida; it seems to me the population has increased greatly the past five or so years because I rarely saw them in the past and now I see them all the time. This platform nest is near the visitor's center at the Nat'l Wildlife Refuge; someone said that both birds at the nest were juvenile's but I'm not so sure, they might have been adults. Another Osprey was flying overhead and the one in the nest began calling. Folks visiting the area thought it was a parent and the one in the nest was a baby calling to the parent but I've seen Osprey's act like that when they feel threatened. It could have been an adult telling another to stay out of it's nesting territory. The photo on right of the Osprey perched in the pine tree was taken at the Haulover Canal area. It's an adult that was only @ 6 feet from us on a lower limb of a tree by the water. The branch he was on was hanging out over the water and he kept looking down, probably looking for fish. The last photo I zoomed and cropped for a closer view:
