For Mother's Day we visited Moss Park, south of Orlando. Moss Park is a nesting ground for Wood Storks, and we saw plenty of those flying around over the lake. But we saw even more Sandhill Cranes. Greyson has seen some cranes at his Jo Grandma and Grandpop's house. He's definitely interested in the giant birds, but he's never gotten very close.
The cranes at Moss Park are obviously used to people. When we were playing on the playground before lunch we saw a pair of adult cranes with a chick wandering around the playground and picnic pavillion area. We stopped to watch them for a minute, the chick was less than a foot tall and very cute - like a giant yellow duckling. The crane family made its way over to the picnic pavillion where two people were starting to grill their lunch. We played for a while and explored the area and decided to have our picnic in the pavillion too. I wish we had gotten the camera out of the car!
The cranes cautiously made their way over to our table. Papa crane (I assume) came right inside the structure, making a distinctive clucking/purring noise in his gullet, begging for food. He got within a few feet of Greyson making Mama Rachel a little nervous. He quickly scooped up whatever Greyson dropped of his lunch onto the floor, and it's possible he got a few scraps of my lunch too. Mike was creeped out that this giant bird had a bite of Greyson's turkey sandwich, but hey - what'r ya gonna do? Greyson imitated the bird's noise, clearing his throat and sounding more like a pig than a bird. Then he decided to get up and check out the Mama and Baby bird, too. Grey took a few steps outside the pavillion towards the other birds and the adults both started making their loud trumpeting alarm call and flapping their wings a bit. Whoaaaa! You should have seen Greyson turn around and scurry back to our table. The birds didn't stay away for long, and soon returned with chick to scavenge some more.
We saw at least three other pairs of cranes at the park, plus one lone bird with what looked like a healed broken leg. I wanted to introduce him to the one legged duck at Lake Lily. We also saw a giant black squirrel that I first thought was a badger or a skunk running across the woods. My dad said it must have been a raccoon squirrel, which it turns out is a fox squirrel - a larger species than we're used to seeing around here. This was the best picture I could find of one on the Internet, and it doesn't do its size justice. It was seriously as big as a cat. Can't wait for Greyson to meet more wilderness creatures as we explore Florida with him.
The cranes at Moss Park are obviously used to people. When we were playing on the playground before lunch we saw a pair of adult cranes with a chick wandering around the playground and picnic pavillion area. We stopped to watch them for a minute, the chick was less than a foot tall and very cute - like a giant yellow duckling. The crane family made its way over to the picnic pavillion where two people were starting to grill their lunch. We played for a while and explored the area and decided to have our picnic in the pavillion too. I wish we had gotten the camera out of the car!
The cranes cautiously made their way over to our table. Papa crane (I assume) came right inside the structure, making a distinctive clucking/purring noise in his gullet, begging for food. He got within a few feet of Greyson making Mama Rachel a little nervous. He quickly scooped up whatever Greyson dropped of his lunch onto the floor, and it's possible he got a few scraps of my lunch too. Mike was creeped out that this giant bird had a bite of Greyson's turkey sandwich, but hey - what'r ya gonna do? Greyson imitated the bird's noise, clearing his throat and sounding more like a pig than a bird. Then he decided to get up and check out the Mama and Baby bird, too. Grey took a few steps outside the pavillion towards the other birds and the adults both started making their loud trumpeting alarm call and flapping their wings a bit. Whoaaaa! You should have seen Greyson turn around and scurry back to our table. The birds didn't stay away for long, and soon returned with chick to scavenge some more.
We saw at least three other pairs of cranes at the park, plus one lone bird with what looked like a healed broken leg. I wanted to introduce him to the one legged duck at Lake Lily. We also saw a giant black squirrel that I first thought was a badger or a skunk running across the woods. My dad said it must have been a raccoon squirrel, which it turns out is a fox squirrel - a larger species than we're used to seeing around here. This was the best picture I could find of one on the Internet, and it doesn't do its size justice. It was seriously as big as a cat. Can't wait for Greyson to meet more wilderness creatures as we explore Florida with him.
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