Birds of Florida, Part 2: The Venice Rookery

In my last month's post, I featured bird images from the beautiful Myakka River State Park, along the Gulf coast of Florida. Today's post features some birds I found at my next stop of my winter Florida trip ... the Venice Rookery.

The Venice Rookery is a small, but wonderful place to see roosting and nesting (in season) birds. Many different species of birds use the Venice Rookery. One of the predominant birds of Venice include the Great Blue Heron:

 

And displaying herons, looking for a mate:

 And a couple of juvenile herons were in a nest, waiting for food to be delivered:

There were also several pairs of Great Egrets that were busy nest building, courting, and even mating:

Coincidentally, the nest with the two Great Blue Heron chicks was almost on top of a Great Egret nest. On a couple of occasions, one of the heron chicks would poke at the Egret sitting on the nest:

Another bird of the Venice Rookery was the Cattle Egret. Upon arrival at the rookery (pre-sunrise), you could see loads of "white spots" on the small island that makes up the rookery. As sunrise approached, these dots would come to life as the cattle egrets left the rookery for foraging (note: image made in darkness, using flash):

There were also a few Common Moorhens foraging underneath the cover of the rookery, occasionally coming out for a photo:

If you're ever near Venice, Florida, I'd highly encourage you to stop by the rookery. It is located right in town, in fact it is directly behind the Florida State Highway Patrol station in Venice!

This blog post was written by, and all photography created by Jim Braswell of Show-Me Nature Photography.