3-5-24 Venice Rookery

 First a few pics from our time at the beach Sunday night when we went to see and hear and smell (the marijuana) of the drumming circle.  We also watch the sunset in the clouds.  I will attempt to put on a short video of the drumming first.

This morning was slightly overcast, but the sun burned through quite early and we took a ride down to the Venice Rookery. The birds were looking for mates or nesting on the island.  We even spotted a few babies.  We saw great egrets, a morph of a great egret, little blue heron, great blue heron, anhinga, mourning dove, blue jay, black-crowned night heron, a flock of glossy ibis, turkey vulture, and common gallinule.  We then went into the town of Venice (a charming and larger version of Mystic) and did a bit of window shopping although Cathie did find two sundresses.  We ate at lunch at Abbys on Miami - delicious!  The last pic I took was a mural of sand hill cranes just in case we don't see one in real life.  Back on Siesta Key Dave took a nap, Cathie read on the couch while Susanne, Russ and I took our books down to the canal and sat in the shade to read.  We went to dinner tonight at Walt's Fish House where we again had fantastic meals.  On the way home we stopped at Detwiler's to stock up on more fruit and a few other items.  Tomorrow we have several plans in mind depending on the weather.  It is supposed to be a rainy day, but so far this week each day has been better than predicted.