Marco Island 2013

Marco Island - January 2013

All photos are © Marshall Faintich

My first trip there was to get a better photo of a Burrowing Owl. I went to the same burrow where I photographed one last year, but I didn't see the owl. I decided to try pishing to see if an owl would react to the sound, and on the second pish, the Burrowing Owl popped out of the burrow, saw me, and kept turning its head from side to side to locate the source of the sound. I kept pishing for a minute or so while I took photos, and then thought that I had pestered the owl enough and left so that it could return to the burrow.

Burrowing Owl

Next stop was at the Goodland Bridge where I saw a Brown Pelican waiting for fish to fall from the sky.

Brown Pelican

I met Andy at Tigertail Beach on the second trip. He told me about the two White-morph Reddish Egrets he had seen on a prior trip there. In addition to seeing this rare bird, I also saw some Snowy Plovers and American Oystercatchers, two new life birds for me.

Start of the peninsular area

White-morph Reddish Egret

American Oystercatcher

Juvenile American Oystercatcher

American Oystercatcher

American Oystercatchers

American Oystercatcher

Snowy Plover

Great Black-backed Gull

Great Black-backed Gulls

Great Black-backed Gull

On my third trip to Marco Island, Alice and I went to Tigertail Beach. The tide was high so there weren't a lot of shore birds, but I did see a few of them. One was very interesting as it was banded. After sending the photos to some prominent members of the Sanibel-Captiva Audubon Society, I was told that was a Red Knot, another new life bird for me. I also saw a female Magnificent Frigatebird flying high in the sky. I had seen them before, but not in North America. An Osprey landed on the Marco Island sign - a favorite place for it to eat lunch. And speaking of lunch, while Alice and I were eating at the small concession area between the beach and the parking lot, a Yellow-throated Warbler landed in a palm tree a few feet away. There was a striking female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker on another tree. But the highlight of the day was watching a Reddish Egret doing its comical fishing dance, someimes with its long neck held horizontal, and always opening its wings to shadow a potential catch.

Brown Pelican