One huge beautiful pond

[addy1]

We took a break from laying tile, hanging drywall........... Wandered over to Wakodahatchee Wetlands, the water utilities company pumps 2 million gallons of treated water into the park every day. The wetlands further cleanse the water.

Unreal beautiful, full of the birds we love to hate, but they are so beautiful. It is spring, a ton of babies everywhere.





We went at dawn, calm serene waters.



The bird that most of us do not like to see near our ponds.





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Multicolored heron so elegant looking





a baby

 

[addy1]

Turtle and bird sharing the same roost



Nesting night herons



Baby green heron



The plant it is living on



This bird flew over to the lily pads and picked off pieces, chunks, most likely for a nest somewhere



Baby ducks in the duck weed



Mating Dance



The alligator swam by............around 15 feet, the bird alerted everybody around

 

[addy1]

red wing black birds, they let you get within feet of them



The herons taking a break from feeding babies



big turtles



fish



spider lilies I think






Birds nesting on top of birds

Very Noisy heron's

 

[addy1]

some neat flowers



During a walk on the beach, turtle tracks to lay her eggs



OUCH! if you run into them

 

[addy1]

These birds chase the mowers, running full out after them to get the critters stirred up

 

[taherrmann4]

Looks like a great place to take your kayak and see the wildlife.

 

[addy1]

There are two, one is 50 acres, one 100 acres. Really neat way to clean the water. Educational too.

 

[j.w]

Very nice pix addy! Looks like you had a good time in between working :cheerful:

 

[Event Horizon]

I have never seen a baby heron. Awesome pictures.

 

[addy1]

They are so cute, squawking like crazy driving their parents crazy like kids do I could not believe the sound the gb heron makes!

 

[CometKeith]

Great pics addy. Did you see harry there?

 

[addy1]

Great pics addy. Did you see harry there?

I saw Harry and all his relatives, then he followed me home with his family! We have had record numbers of herons flying over our pond this summer. Must be in their rookery flight path. We even had two herons fly over together. One was flapping away, right over the pond did a total pause in the air, turned, looked down at our pond, but kept going. I know they will stop one of these days.

I hate netting the pond, even with it being deep, straight sides, harry still gets fish. The net I ended up with, fishing net like they use on big boats, has a large weave, not that easy to see, i.e. bothersome to the eye. Maybe harry and his family can see the netting when they fly over and just keep going............lol yeah right!

 

[j.w]

Hope Harry and his buds keep on just driving by and don't stop for snacks! So far no Harry's here and hope the loud radio is really what's keeping them away.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

Wow, lots of wildlife there.
One thing that caught my eye was the Nuphar (lilies). It's obviously tropical there,judging by the alligator, and yet you have Nuphar growing in those wetlands. The Nuphar habitat is suppose to be temperate to subarctic Northern Hemisphere. It's the only native "lily" type plants that grow here, they also range pretty far up north as well, it's interesting to see they also grow in a tropical climate.

 

[addy1]

Neat, that bird liked to snack on them or tear off pieces for its nest. I had no idea what kind they were, you can see the small yellowish buds. We did not have any binocs with us, tried to use the camera as binocs lol

This is south florida, i.e. west palm beach, just north of fort lauderdale on the east coast.

The wetlands used to be farmed, the family that owned the farm sold the land to the county, cheap, only if it was converted back to the wetlands it used to be. A great way to use reclaimed water. They built the second wetlands, twice the size about 5 years later.

The Wetlands is surrounded by houses, you would never think it was there.



We have been down there taking care of his parents for years, working on houses.

My honey heard a subway guy talking about alligators at the wetlands, luckily he asked where is that............................drum roll..............

10 minutes from where we have spent lots and lots of time.