Where's the Wildlife?

Saturday, March 31, 2012

This photo pretty well sums up the present Gulf of Mexico with its thousands (yes, thousands!) of oil rigs and refineries. Check out this YouTube video which graphically shows wells from 1942 to 2005. I can only imagine how the number has grown in the last 7 years. "Free the Mississippi" an article from Onearth Magazine sent by Karen Glum in April after the expedition is sad but also an eye opener.

Can you spot three denizens of the natural world in this photo? Stumped? Scroll down.

Yes, there are three White Ibis in this photo, pretty well camouflaged among the pipes and stacks.

Below are a couple of wildlife photos that Ann Tompkins took (gecko and alligator) and sent to me in early April, and a couple that I took and am just now posting.

A Gecko warming itself on my windshied wipers. Maybe it was gleaning insects from those on the car. I see one on the blade above its head.

A blue crab crossing the road. I took my bike along to keep up my training and these guys whipped out and quickly scuttled sideways across the road, which was at the foot of the levee.

Tricolored heron. On our last day we split into two teams and went birding. The tide was up so the water was over the road in spots and the birds were right beside the road. We saw trees full of yellow and black crowned night herons and roseate spoonbills; white and glossy ibis, snowy egrets, little blue herons, anhingas and double-crested cormorants, many osprey. My team even  found a nesting great horned owl. The most surprising to me were the little blue herons. They were bright blue and their bills were even brighter blue. I had never seen little blue herons that looked anything but slate blue before.

Andrew East binocs around neck, Sibley field guide in hand posing as a true birder before his bird-doo bedecked car, on the afternoon that we split into two teams and went birding. Lisa Glum behind Andrew and Jody Rosengarten on the bayou side of the car.

Now you can see why I thought the alligatgor dead, though looking at this photo,
it does seem to have the light of life in its eye.