Lakeland RV Park - 25 Jan 2007
25 January 2007 Lakeland RV Park, Lakeland, FL
1300 Hrs. Just arrived at 900 Old Combee Rd w/ Esther, Hal and Robin, and have just unloaded the car. I walked across to the office and found the tripod I had mailed earlier in the week and am heading back to load the scope.
No sooner did I have the scope loaded onto the ‘pod that I looked out toward the pond and found a hawk sitting on the large TV antennae over the clubhouse. It was overcast and a bit windy, but I could see from the porch that it was a Red-shouldered Hawk. Grabbing the Fuji F30 and adaptor, I slowly walked out onto the porch and across the road toward the clubhouse. The hawk seemed to care little for my presence (and for the rest of the park for that matter) so I was able to get closer and digiscope it from about 50 yds.
At one point the sun popped out for a few minutes, and I was able to photograph its pretty red shoulder patch. I was able to photograph it at full zoom using the 2-second timer. After a few minutes I walked around the clubhouse so that I could watch it from the front, and took several stills of it while it preened. It would fluff its feathers then screech loudly in response to a nearby Blue Jay that mimicked its call from across the road. I took a nice long video of it before taking a few last portrait shots. Too bad the sun gave way to overhead clouds… I then left it and returned to the house.
1500 Hrs. The hawk had flown off and the skies cleared, so I headed down to the large, 50-acre pond next to the clubhouse. From the dock I scoped out the far side of the pond and found an Anhinga drying its feathers after a short stint of swimming/feeding. At full zoom on the camera and 60X on the scope the 2-second timer was needed to capture a relatively sharp image of the bird from about 100 yds.
Meanwhile, a Boat-tailed Grackle popped and gurgled loudly from the same antennae that held the Red-shouldered Hawk just a few minutes before.
A Fish Crow landed on the edge of the dock next to me, then chased away the grackle from its perch. As it posed, I took several digiscoped images from down below. As I snapped away at it the crow then began to squawk, and proceeded to expel several freshly-eaten snails from its mouth!
Off in the distance a large flock of Double-crested Cormorants flew to the southwest, and I was able to capture them w/ the 400mm Sigma.
Unfortunately, I was too far away to do anything but watch six Wood Storks circling over the large lake about a half-mile away. They would drift in and out of view, along with several Black and Turkey Vultures.
Lakeland RV Park, FL, Polk, Florida, US
Jan 25, 2007 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Protocol: Traveling
0.2 mile(s)
9 species
Wood Stork (Mycteria americana) 6
Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga) 1
Double-crested Cormorant (Nannopterum auritum) 23
Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus) 3
Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) 6
Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) 1
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) 1
Fish Crow (Corvus ossifragus) 1
Boat-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus major) 1
View this checklist online at https://ebird.org/checklist/S1
This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (https://ebird.org/home)
