January 04th, 2022

Ready for the second hike?  Hurrah! Let's go!

On Sunday, Tim and I once again headed north.  This time to Felt's Audubon Preserve in, I think Bradenton.  It was an absolutely lovely place with very few other visitors which always means bonus points for me.   It's on the smallish side at a measly 28 acres but they managed to squeeze a lot of variety into that space.  There were ponds, open fields, wooded areas, hammock and swampy bits all with the intention of attracting a wide variety of birds.  And clearly it worked because even though we visited in the afternoon which is not usually a big bird activity time of day, we still saw a number of different sorts of birds.

One of the coolest things there, and something I'd never seen before, was a bird blind.  That is a building, painted green, with only one door but multiple windows all on the back wall.  Outside of those windows is an open area surrounded by trees and filled with various sorts of bird feeders (to attract various sorts of birds, y'see) and bird baths and so forth.  It was wonderful!  I could have spent the entire visit just in that one building.

They had something else I'd never seen before too.  A bee hotel.  A what?

Apparently there are bees that do not live in hives, do not make honey and are rather solitary.  I'm told that these sorts of bees are also less likely to sting.  Anyway, this is a place for them to live, lay their eggs and then a place for  the baby bees to grow up.  Wow!  The things I learn!

We wandered the many paths that looped and crossed and saw other a few other birds:

There were quite a number of bird houses as one might expect.  Here are just a couple:

There were lovely flowers of course and things that used to be flowers.  I always find the flowers:

Other creatures were around too including a lot more turtles than usual once again:

And then of course, the gorgeous preserve itself!

What a wonderful place to spend part of the day.  I would definitely like to return to this preserve another time, perhaps earlier in the day and/or a different time of year so see what else there is to see.  

Anyway, so that's the tale of our New Year's hikes. Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for coming along ;)