Nature preserved

We got into the truck a little after 9:00am…thats really good for us!!  And it was a good thing because we spent the WHOLE day at Ellie Schiller Wildlife State Park in Homosassa Springs.  The rangers here clearly love their jobs.  Several times throughout the day they have programs where a ranger speaks about the animals.  They were entertaining, educational and really left you fascinated by an animal that just moments before you thought to be ordinary.  Other than the hippo, all the animals here are native to the area.  And unlike a zoo, the animals here have been rescued from injury or other circumstance.

I am not a bird guy…I don’t bird watch…and I can only identify a few common birds.  But the birds here really intrigued me…especially the water birds: flamingos, spoon bills, pelicans, herons, egrets, ibises (is that what you call more than one ibis?) and probably some others.  Pelicans remind me of pterodactyls….they look prehistoric.  This one had a nest with a couple of eggs that it was working so hard to adjust twigs and feathers for…it was sweet but it was awkward looking labor.  A mama pelican fed its baby (that was seriously the same size as mom) by opening up its beak and that throat pouch and, no crap, the baby stuck its head ALL THE WAY IN mama’s mouth to get the little fish.  Come on…if you can do that surely you can stick your head under water to get a fish can’t you?

This was a really fun day at a very nicely done park.  Again the people working at the park obviously love what they do and it shows in many ways!