Trip13

Friday.

Nice early start. Got up as soon as the sky got blue. Nice warm calm day again.

Moved back to an ocean front site. Sat on the dock. Schools of fish. We have our own resident barracuda on this dock. Under this dock, anyway. He’s only eighteen inches long, but he does the whole barracuda thing. Watching. Just hanging there motionless, and watching. I think he likes us. He seems so interested in everything we do….

Drove up to sugarloaf key, then off to the side, across another bridge, to another island. Walked through a mangrove swamp looking for the mangrove cuckoo. Never saw it. Might have heard it. Got stopped by the police.

Came back. Had lunch. Headed off to Key West for a sunset sail on the fabled trimaran (picture). This boat only takes six passengers at a time. We got luckier than that. We were the only two passengers for the afternoon, so we got a private tour. Left at two o’clock. Motored across the flat water to an uninhabited mangrove island. Tied up the boat. Launched the sea kayaks. Paddled for a couple hours. Rebecca from the boat paddled with us and gave us the eco-tour, and showed us some really cool places to paddle through. Saw tons of seabirds. Saw mangrove crabs, and a mangrove snake underwater. Played with a sea cucumber. Motored back across the flat water to the harbor, spun the boat around and admired the Key West sunset (picture).

Got a stuffed manatee that seems to have the same expression as Annie. Maybe Annie is actually a Cockatee. Or a Manapoo.

More and more, I find myself birding by sound. I’ll sort the different noises I’m hearing, identify which ones I’m familiar with, and focus on finding the source of the ones I don’t recognize. When we moved our motorhome today, the first think I noticed when I stepped out were the bird noises coming from the bushes right next to our site. New birds. Exotic birds. Immediately, I went to investigate. I found two cages of exotic birds the people in the site next to us apparently carry around and set outside, weather permitting. I assumed that part about weather permitting, we haven’t talked to them yet (the owners of the birds, not the birds). But certainly, you’d have to be conscious of whether you were in Key West, or Keystone, before you put the birds out. They could freeze right up if you weren’t paying attention.

Saw pelicans, cormorants, frigate birds, yellow crowned night herons, little blue heron, tri colored herons, a thousand black skimmers, a stingray, a dead cormorant, a coopers hawk, egrets, terns, seagulls, ibis, and more palm warblers.

Sat on the dock tonight and listened to the fish splashing in the dark. Annie sat with us. She didn’t actually sit, she did that stretch out to look at something, prepared to flee at any moment, growling that growl that says “I know you’re out there. I don’t know what you are, but I know you’re out there. Stay back. I know karate.” She was almost gotten by three different things. They were, in order, a floating bait bucket, a floating mangrove leaf, and a dock cleat. Judy finally took pity on her and held her for a while so she could relax a little.

Traveled one hundred feet in the motorhome today. No new birds. Motorhome moving. Dock sitting. Dock sitting in the dark. Bird watching. Sailing. Kayaking.

Tomorrow, either canoeing in the State Park to a place that’s supposed to have manatees, crocodiles, alligators, and sharks. Or bird watching back on Key West to try to see the white crowned pigeon, a new bird for us. Tough choices.