More Than Turtles

These pictures from the last couple of weeks are a bit out of order but I wanted to share something other than Christmas cards so far this month.  

Friday night, after the rain had blown through for the trip down to the condo, and after a visit with my friend J it didn't look like the sky in the back was going to offer any color as all the pink clouds seemed to be over the bay and fading fast.  I decided to go out and sit on the back porch anyway to listen to the evening sounds in between the drone of the air conditioners.  Then this happened.  That dark cloud on the horizon split the sky in two.

Memorial Day weekend was a bit of a wash out as far as helping our friends on LBI do their planting, but those of us that arrived on Friday did get a round of miniature golf in before the rain started.  I won't say who's who but the winning order was yellow, purple, pink, blue, green.

This black-crowned night heron had been hanging out in that tree for several hours that day.  There was another one in the reeds not too far from the tree. There is a little channel of water in that area that we sometimes see birds diving into at certain times of the day.  It depends on what's in the water that they're interested in we're assuming.  

This Saturday we decided to go on a turtle hunt down Seven Bridges Road in Tuckerton.  There were turtle crossing signs everywhere and we did see a couple of them.  But I didn't get many pictures of them as there were cars either in front or behind us although we all waited for them to cross the road.  So we also focused on finding some birds on either side of the marsh.  It was easier to pull over to let the cars go around us to take pictures.  And it also helped that we were in the truck this time and higher up so I could above the grasses that were growing alongside the road.

This is a Glossy Ibis

We were alone on the road for this one.

Strange to see these three different varieties of birds together in the same place.  A couple of egrets and a heron.  

A car going over the bridge nearby spooked them a bit as I was snapping pics.

And then we all went on our merry way.