folo

This week’s Saddy Animals is a guest post by our Nature Lover. Take it away, Jawge . . .

While in Venice, Florida, this past week I shot a few images of yung’ns replenishing the indigenous bird populace.

Everyone but the most jaded is attracted a bit by children, and most of Folo’s readers have seen Herons or Egrets. I have a Great Blue that feeds in my backyard in Tupelo. But the Venice Rookery is world famous, a place where wading and diving birds nest and raise their young. At night it serves as a roost for hundreds of non-nesting birds in a space not bigger than Elvis’ earliest home. It is surrounded by a lake including this gator (here, in it) to keep out ‘coons and possums and other interlopers.

Meanwhile, a rookery is for making babies, which is a fairly aggressive affair (R rated for violence) in the  Blue Heron world. It occurs after Dad brings home some sticks and gets rewarded (R rated for violence and sex).

I have rarely seen 3 nestlings at a time in a nest in the rookery.

One occasionally sees a momma passing on her skills at nest-building.

The nestlings are very aggressive with each other, stabbing frequently at their siblings. I am constantly amazed that I’ve never seen a blind adult. As they age to fledglings before their first flight, they become quite agitated when a parent returns with a swallowed meal. They grab at the parent, which turns on a reflex for the parent to regurgitate an undigested meal.

Not my idea of Sunday Dinnah, fresh though it may be.