Saturday 2-19-2022 Celery Fields

It was still a bit foggy last night so we skipped the sunset.  The girls finally won at cards again so the boys are only up 1 - yay!

We got up early again this morning and drove into Sarasota for the Farmer's Market.  We loaded up on fresh fruits and veggies for our last week here.  The colors and variety of the veggies and fruits were a beautiful picture for the eyes.  We also bought more of the delicious bread we had last week as well as some fresh fish: Royal Red shrimp, red snapper and salmon.  What a feast we will have tonight.  We also bought a new veggie (to us at least) called Romanesco - related to broccoli and cauliflower, but chartreuse in color (see pic).  It is interesting to look at and I hope delicious to eat.

We came back to store the goodies and then went back out to Celery Fields to do some bird watching.  At the feeder we saw lots of red-winged blackbirds, grackles, and a lone female painted bunting.  Just as we left the area there was a small bunny just sitting in the garden posing for us.  There were lots of purple martins hanging around the house built for them.  We then walked across the street to the dock and spotted some boat tail grackles, an alligator, all three types of gallinules - common, purple, and coot, a palm warbler, blue-winged teals, a cardinal, an anhinga, American egret, a mocking bird, and both types of vultures. We also saw a female grackle with what looks like a snail in her beak.  We heard the call of a limpkin, but were not able to see him.  We drove around the block to the other viewing area and spotted a Northern Harrier, a snowy egret, a tricolored heron, a little blue heron some female mallards, and a turtle.  We finally spotted a least bittern, but I couldn't get his pic as he was well hidden in the reeds.  We heard the call of a sora, but again could not locate him.  

We came back and had leftovers for lunch.  Cathie and Dave went down for a nap and Russ went out to the pool to read.