Category: Birds Need Plants
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January 2023 Birds Need Plants Photo Contest
Birds have evolved into such unique diversity in every ecological niche. Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are the only woodpeckers that drill shallow holes through the cambium layer or inner bark of trees, tapping the plant tissues (xylem and phloem), which conduct water, nutrients, and sap that oozes out of the holes.
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December 2022 Birds Need Plants Photo Contest
How exciting to spot a Ruby-throated Hummingbird flying into the tree, then find its tiny nest in the making on a branch overhanging the water. Then return week after week to see the full nesting/developmental process. Alice Horst captured it all!
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November 2022 Birds Need Plants Photo Contest
Common Nighthawks are not hawks and do not hunt at night but at dusk and dawn.
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October 2022 Birds Need Plants Photo Contest
Characteristic of icterids, male Bobolinks sing a long, bubbly song while sitting on a stalk or during their undulating flight across the fields.
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September 2022 Birds Need Plants Photo Contest
Such elegance, this male Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea)!
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May 2022 Birds Need Plants Photo Contest
Blue Cypress Lake: an Osprey Paradise Osprey Pandion haliaetus by Bill Loftus, Ph.D. On a calm, sunny morning in April, a small boat captained by Jim Shea leaves the dock at Blue Cypress Lake with three other Pelican Island Audubon members. Motoring out the boat channel onto the main lake, Jim turns the boat north…
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April 2022 Birds Need Plants Photo Contest
A Mouthful to Cache Florida Scrub-Jay Aphelocoma coerulescens by Juanita N. Baker, Ph.D. Did you know that our Florida Scrub-Jay is so very smart? In the fall when oaks produce acorns, one Jay caches (hides and stores) over 8000 acorns in thousands of different places in the sand and can remember each place! If they…
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March 2022 Birds Need Plants Photo Contest
From most populous to threatened Tricolored Heron Egretta tricolor Order CICONIIFORMES – Family ARDEIDAE by Juanita N. Baker, Ph.D. Even on a cold and wet PIAS field trip to Orlando Wetlands, the birds can be found but …also cold and wet. Beautifully photographed by Lou Lower, every feather is detailed. Appearing very much alive in…
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February 2022 Birds Need Plants Photo Contest
Red-headed Woodpecker Melanerpes erythrocephalus by Juanita N. Baker, Ph.D. Although it evolved much earlier, fossils of this Red-headed Woodpecker indicate that this beauty was living in Florida 1.6-2.0 million years ago along with saber-tooth tiger, mastodon, giant armadillo, and camel, eons before humans ever wandered into Florida.1 First humans whose traces indicate they were here…
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January 2022 Birds Need Plants Contest
Brazilian Pepper Thrives, but fewer of our Native Birds do by Juanita N. Baker, Ph.D. Brazilian pepper is spreading across Florida after being imported into Florida for its beauty. Beauty it is, in this photo by John Wolaver of a serene and well-fed resident Northern Mockingbird surrounded by the pepper’s stunning red berries. Prior to…