At the end of today's "Birds of Amelia" tour, the birds were putting on quite a show for us! First, a great blue heron caught and ate a large fish near us, and then we got to see Angie, our female Anhinga (or snake bird) who lives behind the nature center, get a fish as well. Afterwards she hopped up a nearby branch to fan her tail and wings out to dry off. A true beauty! 
Looking for a romantic setting for your Valentine? On Valentine's day, we are offering a kayak tour as we watch the sun set over the marsh. Grab your valentine and join us! Also, on February 15 we are having a breakfast with the birds, enjoy some coffee as you watch the birds wake up! Check out our nature center calendar on our website for more February events, and for March's calendar!
We are pleased to introduce our newest naturalist...Neil Bryant is an intern from the University of Gloucestershire (England). He will be with us until May. As you can see, we've already put him to work! Stop by the nature center to meet him! 
Our last place to visit on our trip was Corkscrew Swamp. They have a 2.25 mile boardwalk that winds through the swamp. It was sprinkling a little bit, but the magic of the place was not lost. And, Chris fulfilled her mission of finding a limpkin here - a bird that is hard to find. But, we saw two hanging out in a tree and heard their loud, eerie call. 
Marco Island is pretty developed, so it was odd to find a vacant lot in the middle of a neighborhood marked off like this, with an owl sitting in the middle. It's an important protection, since the habitat for burrowing owls is disappearing. 
At Tigertail Beach, we saw this pair of nesting Osprey. We were thinking the one in the nest was the female. Although they share the duties of parenthood, we learned from our keynote speaker from Pelican Island NWR that the female may have a brown "necklace", or specks on her chest, and the male's would be pure white. 
After visiting Rookery Bay, we went down Shell road to visit Briggs Nature Center, where Christina worked a summer internship while in school. They have a nice scenic overlook where we could see mangrove islands and some of the birds that use them.
Everywhere we looked during our trip, we saw bromeliads, many of which had beautiful reddish florescences shooting up from the middle.
Not only did we find Florida Panther scat on our trip, we also saw this real one! Fortunately, the number of Florida Panthers are increasing, but unfortunately more of them are also getting hit by cars.
This is a display of an Oarfish, another mysterious creature found in an estuary.
A model of some of the birds common to the area - we have these birds on Amelia Island, too, although our Roseate Spoonbills come down here for the winter.
This display shows a gopher tortoise in its burrow. Their habitat can be scrub, dominated by palmettos, or on the sand dunes, where the ones at AIP live. Also shown at the top (although it's hard to tell from this photo) is an indigo snake, a beautiful snake that also uses the burrows made by the tortoises. They can get to over 8 feet in length, longest in North America. Even though they are non-venomous, they can eat rattlesnakes. Both gopher tortoises and indigo snakes are threatened species, due mostly to habitat loss.
We checked out the Environmental Learning Center at the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Naples. They had wonderful displays, very impressive and educational. The display Chris is standing by is a 10x model of a of a polka-dot batfish, which have been found on the reserve. The flounder was also cool to watch. The purple sea urchin was in a touch tank, you can see it's tube feet in this photo. They often cover themselves with objects to blend in to their surroundings. This one has an operculum on it, which is the trap door part of a snail.
The Audubon Center for Birds of Prey, located in Maitland, FL, was on hand during the SW FL Birding and Wildlife festival, at Rookery Bay. They take in hundreds of injured birds of prey each year for rehabilitation. Birds that are non-releasable may be used for educational purposes, such as this great horned owl, Cracker the Crested Caracara, and Paige the bald eagle. 
