Woodstock and the Muppets

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I have been incredibly busy at work the last few weeks, but I did manage to escape for a long weekend.  Mary Ann and I planned a quick trip to Florida, and we were joined by friends Ricki and Ron.  Ron and I flew down last Wednesday evening, and Ricki and Mary Ann joined us on Thursday evening.

Anyone who knows Ron, would agree that Ron is a hard core nature photographer.  He and I had been planning this trip for a couple of weeks, and since we only had one day where we could photograph anything we wanted to, we planned a full day.

First stop was the Venice Rookery, a perennial favourite of mine.  And this year did not disappoint.  I had been there last year in January, so a February trip was perfect to see the birds a little later in the mating season.

We were over the Moon to see newborn chicks.

We nicknamed this baby Great Egret "Woodstock".  Those of you old enough to remember the old Peanuts comics, will see the striking resemblance.

We soon realized that there were two chicks in the nest.

So Woodstock turned out to be twins, Woodstock I and Woodstock II.

There were also newborn Blue Herons.

Our friend Missy Mandel (also an outstanding nature photographer) thought these looked like the Muppets, so that name stuck.  Again, those of you old enough to remember the Muppets, will see the striking resemblance to their hair styles.

Here is another couple of shots of the Muppets.

We also found some older Blue Heron chicks, but the newborns were so much more interesting.  They were only days old, and had trouble lifting their heads with any degree of precision.

On our way back to Fort Myers, we made a detour to Cape Coral.  It seems that Cape Coral is well known for their Burrowing Owls.  Apparently Cape Coral has the largest concentration of Burrowing Owls in the state of Florida.  The burrows are found throughout the city.  We spoke to a local Floridian, who gave us great intel on where we were likely to find the owls.  

Sure enough, and after realizing how well camouflaged they are, we found them.  Very small, and very cute.

The city of Cape Coral does a very good job marking the burrows and encourages photographers to keep their distance.

After a long day at these two stops, we returned to the airport to pick up Ricki and Mary Ann.  Not only were we happy to see our wives, we were a couple of happy photographers.

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Thanks for reading...

Mark