Creatures on the waterway

One of the fun things about this trip is the creatures you see.  Everyday, many times a day, we see dolphins playing in the water.  

When we are near the ocean, pelicans, primarily brown but sometime white, are usually fishing around the waterway.  They are fun to watch.  Usually pelicans fly close to the water, but when they fish they rise up to 30' to 50' above the water, tuck their wings in and plunge, head first, straight into the water.  If they are successful in catching a fish, they bob back up to the surface, stick their beaks straight up and swallow.  If they didn't get their fish, they just bob back up and shake their heads.

Ospreys like to build their nests on posts.  This means that most waterway markers in osprey country have nests on top.  Sometimes the nests are so large they obscure the markers.  It is osprey family season right now, so we can often see one parent in the nest with the babies while the other is out catching food for the family. I realize this picture is small, but that is an osprey parent standing behind the green light and there is a chick in the nest.

Watching ospreys fish is interesting, too.  They fly 30' to 100' above the water.  How they see a fish from up there, I'll never know.  When they do see a fish, they tuck their wings and dive head first, but at the last minute they flip around and hit the water feet first.  Unlike the pelicans who catch the prey in their mouths, ospreys grab the fish with their talons then fly it back to the nest or a perch before they eat it.  Ospreys actually look a bit like bald eagles, who also live along the waterway.  The only way we can tell the difference sometimes is that the eagles have completely white heads while the osprey heads are brown and white.

Alligators are around but we rarely see them.  One morning, anchored in the marshes of Georgia, Jim saw two gators swimming across our anchorage.  Again, I know the picture is small, but trust me, that thing that looks like a log in the water is actually a 5' gator.

Herons, egrets and ibises are common waders in the marshes.  One morning we saw an entire flock of pink birds on the shore.  They all were all sitting on the ground with their heads under their wings, so we couldn't easily identify them.  We were in southern Georgia so they could have been flamingos or roseate spoonbills, but we'll never know because all we saw was the brilliant pink color.