he Great Egret (Ardea alba), also known as Common Egret, Large Egret or Great White Heron, is a large, widely-distributed egret. Distributed across most of the tropical and warmer temperate regions of the world, Wikipedia® What we have here are larger fledgelings being fed by one of the parents at the nest. I would imagine they will no longer be there shortly.

'Nuff said.

My neighbor has a wee pond next to her house and in that pond are two rather colorful turtles. Amusing to watch I might add...

My neighbor has a wee pond next to her house and in that pond are two rather colorful turtles. Amusing to watch I might add...

Lesser Yellowlegs breeds in open boreal forest with scattered shallow wetlands. Winters in wide variety of shallow fresh and saltwater habitats. They eat aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates, particularly flies and beetles. Occasionally small fish and seeds.

The Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger) is a tern-like seabird, one of three very similar birds species in the skimmer family. It breeds in North and South America. Northern populations winter in the warmer waters of the Caribbean and the tropical and subtropical Pacific coasts, but the South American races make only shorter movements in response to annual floods which extend their feeding areas in the river shallows.

The remarkable bill of the Black Skimmer sets it apart from all other American birds. The large red and black bill is knife-thin and the lower mandible is longer than the upper. The bird drags the lower bill through the water as it flies along, hoping to catch small fish.

Both the male and female Lesser Yellowlegs provide parental care to the young, but the female tends to leave the breeding area before the chicks can fly, thus leaving the male to defend the young until fledging.

Florida's wetlands are seen by residents and visitors alike as a unique attribute that the state possesses, being home to a wide variety of plants and animals that need this climate to survive. However, because Florida is also seen as such a profitable area for land development and tourism in the summer, these wetlands may be in danger from real estate developers. This fundamental problem is being taken care of with a system of wetland mitigation, which seeks to make up for any destruction of the wetland areas, by requiring them to sponsor projects that restore or create new wetland areas.

After World War II, Florida wanted to increase both its truck farming and its cattle business. Already it was the second largest cattle state after Texas, but they wanted more land. More than a million acres of Florida wetlands were drained with long canals such as in this scene where they did so though many ranches into rivers like the Peace River and the Myakka River. Today, through wetland programs much of this land is being converted by to natural wetlands by selling wetland mitigation credits to developers. Less and less water is flowing through these projects especially during the Spring dry period. In the Summer, this canal will deepen many feet with fast flowing water and silt into the Myakka River system. Little is drained from the Longino Ranch these days, though.

Longino Ranch wetlands in the morning. This is the early spring dry season with about three inches of water in the center of the pond. No fauna other than some small birds were detected in the center area. Coyotes are known to predate these type ponds this early in the season though known were spotted today. The Longino Ranch is 9,000 acres of ranch and woodlands located near the Peace River between Arcadia and Sarasota in the Southwestern part of Florida next to the Myakka River State Park. Much of the wetlands were drained in 1953 with the water sent to the Peace River or the Myakka River.