5-17-17  Time to get some more birding in!

So this time we headed to Green Cay.  It isn't as good as Wakodahatchee for birding, but it's still a nice walk.
I was surprised to see all the plant growth in the water.  Looked like it would make it really hard for the birds to fish.  Last time I was here (a year ago), the water was really clear.

 another look at all the plant growth.

and more!  That's not grass, that's water with lots of green plants in it.

 more green plants covering the water.

 These were in water, too, but they are tall reed like plants.

 Lots of pretty irises there, too.

 lots of  butterflies, but not many that posed on plants for me.  These Zebra Heliconians are quite common in Florida.

 someone pointed these 2 cuties out to me.  Sure glad they did, I would have missed them otherwise.

another view of them

 This use to be a place of a lot of Green Herons, too, but I only saw 2 of them this time and was only able to get pictures of this one.

 another butterfly---i believe this is a Spicebush Swallowtail. 

 There were more anhingas here then I remembered there being.  Wonder how they do swimming in all the water plants.

 There were also a few Cormorants.  They dive for their food, too.

 The guy on the left was making a racket that only baby birds do.  The one on the right flew in and fed it something.  I'm surprised how long they feed their young.  The baby looked bigger than the mother!  I understand that's common since they don't work at feeding themselves until they are quite large.

 close up of a Cormorant.  Love their pretty blue eyes when they're in mating plumage.

 looks like a spider lily.

 I think this is an adolescent moorhen---perhaps that's what the bird I saw at Wako was that I labeled as a Sora.

 a lone Woodstork

 lots of pickerelweed throughout the wetlands.

 don't remember seeing these things before.  Wonder what they are.

 a lone Roseate Spoonbill flew by, too.

 In the same area where there were 2 little owls a year ago, I found this one.  I presume it's one of the 2 from last year.  Hope the other one was just resting somewhere out of view.

 Someone said this was where a couple soft shelled turtles laid their eggs.  I watched him dig for awhile.  He never did come up with anything while I was there.

 An Anhinga posing for a closeup.

 another common plant in the wetlands.

Looks like a Great Heron and a Wood stork.

 more pretty flowers in the wetlands.

 a blue winged teal.

 a wood stork flying by.

 Purple Martin???

 a moorhen looking at his big cousin the Swamp Hen.

 I believe this is an adolscent snowy egret, or maybe a young Little Blue Heron.

 a tri colored heron.

 some flowers I don't remember seeing here before.

 lots of Spotterdocks.

 I believe this is a Reddish Egret. 

 heading out---a gecko checking out the butterfly shelter.

 A man starting talking to us as we were leaving and showed us where some cocoons and catepillars of the Atala butterfly were on the plants in the parking lot.  This is an Atala catepillar turning into a cocoon. 

 a couple of the Atala catepillars. 

 some Atala caccoons. 

 More caccoons.

 And the little butterfly that use to be almost extinct.  They seem to be doing pretty well now.

 We left there and headed to our old Wednesday night dinner spot in Coral Springs near where we use to live----Pasquale's.  Love their pizza and zeppoles.  They do a special on Wed. of a large pizza for the price of a med.  But I wasn't thinking yesterday when we ordered pizza for dinner.  So tonight we got some zeppoles and a large salad.  It was good, too.  After all, I had a bit of my dinner from Mother's day still in the fridge so I ate that later, too.  Ken had the rest of last nights pizza.

The salad that we shared.

 Then we went home----well, it use to be our home.  Wonder who lives there now?

 Our pool still looked very inviting!  Wish they would hurry up and get our pool in Georgia up and running again.  They've been working on it for about a month now and just sent an email that it should be ready in about 2 weeks (that's after sending emails that it would be ready a couple weekends ago).  Apparently fixing the skimmer is more difficult then the rest of the work they did on it.

 Then we drove by Angie and Josh's house (x-house).  Looked really good from the outside.  Would have taken a picture of the front yard, but someone was outside trimming the trees.  Looks like the 3 bushes they planted on the outside of the fence are doing well.  Angie planted them to try and block the dogs views of the street.

 Found this sign interesting near a canal.  They need to put some of them in Green Cay.

Rest of the night was spent at the resort---in the pool, jacuzzi, and chilling in the room.  Thunderstorms were predicted again today, but we manage to avoid them.  It was another great day to be in South Florida!