Crops & Clips-- flashback to December 2018

We will celebrate this December, our final month living in Florida by looking three years back, through the 441 photos I processed in December, 2018. I hope to find images which depict favorite memes: critters of all kinds, especially birds, flowers, butterflies, beautiful skies, reflections...  and scenes which speak for themselves.

Great Egret before sunrise on December 3:

The same bird in full sunlight:

One of my first images of the month was of this Gray-headed Swamphen, demonstrating its use of prehensile toes to pluck and eat the tender shoots of Spikerush:

Little Blue Heron:

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron:

A male Palm Warbler in early morning light:

Yellow-throated Warbler:

Common Grackle:

Northern Mockingbird on Brazilian Pepper:

Blue-headed Vireo:

Female Ruby-throated Hummingbird:

Flowers and fruit of Firebush (Hamelia patens), favored by hummingbirds, butterflies and warblers:

Prairie Warbler:

Male Northern Cardinal:

Female Bald Eagle (Jewel) flying with Tree Swallows:

Immature Red-shouldered Hawk:

Composite view of a female Bobcat sprinting:

Gulf Fritillary:

Tiny flower:

Light fog before Sunrise:

Sun rising over Sunset Lakes:

Our entrance gate all decorated for Christmas:

Rosyfinch Ramblings will be dormant for a while as we are relocating from Florida to Connecticut. Although we both are natives of New Jersey and learned to live with four seasons, this is probably the worst time of year to migrate north. For eighteen years we have not "molted" out of t-shirts, shorts and sandals. As I write this, snow is falling and the wind is howling at our upcoming destination. Hope to be back and enjoying entirely new flora and fauna despite cold noses and toes-es.

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Linking to:

Garden Affair

Nature Thursday

Skywatch Friday

Weekend Reflections

Saturday's Critters

BirdD'Pot

Camera Critters

All Seasons

Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday)

Natasha Musing

Our World Tuesday

Wild Bird Wednesday

My Corner of the World

Timeless Thursday

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Please visit the links to all these posts to see some excellent photos on display
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Bald Eaglets have arrived

Lots of action at the eagle nest the morning of March 12. I could hear eaglets calling and see that they were being fed, but so far had not seen a fuzzy bobble-head. The male (Pride) took over tending the nest early, probably after the female (Jewel) had spent all night covering them.

At about 7:30 AM Jewel was roosting, cleaning her beak and preening:

Jewel took flight and disappeared to the northeast:

She returned in a few minutes. A grackle harassed her and even landed on her back:

The grackle was persistent and followed her almost to the nest:

The pursuing grackle seemed to imitate the eagle's wing positions:

Jewel was carrying a small stick which she dropped at the nest and kept flying:

She roosted out in the open and provided some nice portraits. Although eagles' expressions are fixed they sometimes seemed to convey an attitude:

Jewel displaced Pride at the nest and he flew off:

Jewel tended to the unseen eaglet(s) which called out quite loudly. So far no one had gotten any photos of the brood which started hatching on March 6th or 7th:

BULLETIN: Thursday morning, March 18: I photographed two eaglets in the nest this morning!

This is the first-hatched, the 26th eaglet known to have been hatched at this nest (P Piney 26). She is probably a female as the odds in favor are 3:1--

The younger sibling is P Piney 27:

 A Snowy Egret forages before sunrise at the Wet Prairie:

View from one of my favorite wildlife-watching "sit spots" at the edge of the prairie:

This week I noticed that trees are being removed along the north edge of the prairie, in an area which is zoned for residential development. It harbored an Osprey nest until a few years back when the area was treated with herbicides. The trunks of the dead trees are still standing, but the live growth, mostly exotic Mealaeuca trees, has been cut back, exposing them like skeletons:

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Linking to:

Nature Thursday

Skywatch Friday

Weekend Reflections

Saturday's Critters

BirdD'Pot

Camera Critters

All Seasons

Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday)

Natasha Musing

Our World Tuesday

Wild Bird Wednesday

My Corner of the World

Timeless Thursday

________________________________________________

Please visit the links to all these posts to see some excellent photos on display
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