{"id":28422,"date":"2012-12-23T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-23T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=df46db635984f7a03d24f641977a07cc"},"modified":"2019-12-22T22:35:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T09:35:00","slug":"viera-wetlands-1282012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/viera-wetlands-1282012\/","title":{"rendered":"Viera Wetlands, 12\/8\/2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

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American Bittern<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

This morning I decided to drive down to Viera Wetlands. When I arrived it was very foggy. I was somewhat disappointed, since I couldn’t photograph anything any distance away without losing detail. So of course, this is is when the Peregrine Falcon decided to appear. I found it perched on one of the dead trees.<\/p>\n

It was not that far away, and on a clear morning, I think it would have given me some very nice photos, but this morning, I had to shoot through through the fog. There were many other nice things to find here, though. A Common Yellowthroat was very cooperative, as was an American Bittern. Later on I found aRaccoon near the edge of the water. After making my first pass around the wetlands, the fog had pretty much cleared, so I decided to make another pass and hope that the falcon was still around.<\/p>\n

It was not. But, while looking for it, I saw a flash of blue-gray and another flash of brown. I looked over and found an American Bittern with a frog in its mouth being chased by a Great Blue Heron. The bittern landed a little ways off, but then the heron decided to try to steal the frog a second time and the bittern flew right toward me, still with the frog in its mouth. One of my shots came out very sharp.<\/p>\n

It may be my favorite photo of the year. Other highlights from the morning were an American White Pelican, a Great Blue Heron beginning to think about its nest, and three Buffleheads at the click ponds. I also found one Limpkin that appears to have a bill deformity–the upper mandible appears to be bent.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Peregrine Falcon in the Fog<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Caspian Terns in the Fog<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Brown-headed Cowbird<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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American Bittern<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Common Yellowthroat<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Raccoon<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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American Bittern with Frog<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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American White Pelican<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Great Blue Heron<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Limpkin with Bill Deformity<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Bufflehead<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning I decided to drive down to Viera Wetlands. When I arrived it was very foggy. I was somewhat disappointed, since I couldn’t photograph anything any distance away without losing detail. So of course, this is is when the Peregrine Falcon decided to appear. I found it perched on one of the dead trees. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":2145652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[2527,2531,2528,2530,843,992,1906,224,41,2465,7819],"class_list":["post-28422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-american-bittern","tag-blue-gray","tag-brown-headed-cowbird","tag-buffleheads","tag-common-yellowthroat","tag-great-blue-heron","tag-limpkin","tag-peregrine-falcon","tag-raccoon","tag-scott-simmons","tag-white-pelican"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2145652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}