March 24 and 25: George Lepp & Venice Rookery

In addition to the lectures by George Lepp and the many items available to try and buy, there were also "set-ups" to photograph. There were several models we didn't photograph and four injured birds that Joyce snapped pictures of with her little camera.
Here is the scene with the photographers around the birds.

And here is one of the owls.

This crowd of bird-crazed photographers includes our friends Liz in the denin slacks and Suzie in the brown. The weekend was very interesting and we bought a few things from the camera store that sponsors the weekend. It was also fun because there were so many people we know there. Fort Myers Camera Club was well represented with about 18 attendees. Ron, of course, know other people there, too.

After the program closed on Sunday we met a couple of friends at the famous Venice Rookery. Now Joyce was expecting a massive wall of rock with niches full of bird nests. The truth is that it looks more like monkey island at the zoo, taken over by birds. It was just behind some buildings and there is a conveniently located parking lot. There were lots of birds but apparently not as many as prior years.

One bird causing some excitement was the woodpecker nest in an old, dead tree. Here he is pecking away.

This resident is considerably smaller than most.

We watched a lot of birds fly in for the evening, including this egret.

It a good night for silhouette shots, such as these two egrets.

A number of species all bunk in together. Above are two snowy egrets with a ibis in the center.