Week 3 - My birthday week!

Roseate Spoonbill at Wakotahatchee

Soft Shelled Turtle - Wakotahatchee

Green Heron - Wakotahatchee

Wood Stork at Wakotahatchee

Anhinga at Wakotahatchee.  Note turquoise eye patch

   Week Three was a lot of fun.
    Ted, Bev, Mark and I rented kayaks one day and kayaked the inland waterway around Vero Beach.  We had a nice picnic on one of the islands.  We saw a lot of birds - egrets, herons, pelicans, storks mainly.  The last 20 minutes we paddled pretty hard against the wind, but, overall, it was an idyllic day.  That night, we went with Cal & Alice, Ted & Bev to Jack Baker's Fish Shanty and had a yummy meal.

Florida Scrub Jay at Ft Pierce

Roost at Wakotahatchee

    Mark pulled out all the stops to be sure that I had a wonderful birthday.  We got up at dawn and went to a nearby swampy area to watch birds.  We saw a great heron, various ducks (we have not yet learned many of the ducks) and many Florida swamp jays.  We walked through one of their nesting areas and they were pretty much dive bombing us.
    Later in the day, we visited McKee Botanical Gardens in Vero Beach where we wandered among palms and banyans.
    In the late afternoon, Bev and Ted hosted a wonderful surprise party for me.  The big surprise was Mike and Nancy having driven up from Vero.  They had balloons, lots of food, a yummy cake made by Nancy.  Wonderful.  Mark gave me presents of:  water booties, a new thermos (as he always takes and then loses mine!) and....ruby earrings!  Wow.  I was very spoiled and feel like a very lucky person.  Even though I turned 62, which is a bit depressing.
    Mark did quite a lot of cooking when we were in Vero - salmon dinner, corned beef, fabulous chicken & rice soup.  Alice, age 89, and I went every morning to the exercise room where she did at least 15 minutes of bicyling as she finds it relieves her sciatica pain.  I used the treadmill.
   We drove back down to Lake Worth to visit Mike and Nancy again. They are redoing their kitchen, so we visited the place where they have picked granite slabs for their counters.  We also visited a huge warehouse of tile, sinks and faucets.
   A real highlight of this week included 2 bird walks at Wakotahatchee Wildlife Preserve in DelRay Beach, not too far from Mike and Nancy's.  Wow - it was amazing.  There is a boardwalk which goes through the swamp, which is reclaimed land a water plant.  There were hundreds of nesting birds - many, many egrets, herons, cormorants and anhingas.  The many nests were full of baby birds which kept the parents busy bringing food.  There were many moorhens and teal ducks.  There were many white ibis and glossy ibis and red-winged blackbirds.  We saw a wonderful roseate spoonbill and...Mark and Nancy saw a purple gallinule. (Darn!  I missed it.)  It is one of Otis's favorite birds.  In addition, there were many soft shelled turtles and gators.  I know that I have not listed all of the birds, but, suffice it to say, it was wonderful to see them so close up.  As they were in mating season, many of them have eye coloring which disappears after the season and we could really see the patched up close.