Tuesday - Weather: High 78, low 57. Mostly cloudy. Wind SE 7.
After lunch, we went to Celebration where I fished for over an hour with no luck.  People are friendly, so I had several conversations, one with a boy who was coming home from school.  He fishes there too, and showed me where he got line tangled in a tree.  Another older lady asked all about what I caugt there, if I had to get a license, how big the fish were that I caught, etc. Home for supper.


Wednesday - Weather: High 82, low 61. Partlyly cloudy. Wind SW 6.
After early breakfast, we left about 6:45 to go to meet Thiele's at Titusville near the ocean. We are going bird-watching at Merrit Island National Wildlife Refuge next to the Space Center.  Contained within a 35-mile barrier island, there are 5 to 10 unpaved driving trails, the longest about 10 miles, and also 7 foot trails, the longest about 5 miles.  We walked a 1/4 mile trail at the visitor center, looking for a painted bunting, and a 1 mile one looking for scrub jays, but we had no luck. However, we saw millions of ducks, herons, egrets, etc. (46 different species) and several large alligators. Some new duck species for me, and some beautiful sights across the marshy areas.  We went back into town (only about 2 miles) for lunch at Dixie Crossroads.  Allan and Roberta had been there before on recommendation of some locals, and it is a very popular place.  I had scallops, and the other three had variations of shrimp, all very good.  They have a great menu, and serve powdered-sugar-coated corn fritters immediately when you sit down.  They are excellent, and we could have made a meal out of them.  We finally wound up our bird watching at about 5:30 and left for home.  Unfortunately, we had to drive through a terrific thunderstorm, and I tried a different way back, made a wrong turn at one spot, so it took us about 2 hours to get home (should be less than one hour).  They finally got some much needed rain, but I wish it would have happened AFTER we were home in bed!

Thursday - Weather: High 86, low 66. Partly cloudy. Wind SW 13.
Very warm, but nice breeze, so it feels good in the shade.  Early afternoon, we went to Panera Bread for our treat.  They have the best strawberry scone (although their coffee is not quite up to Starbucks!!)  Next we went to get groceries and look for a birthday present for Daniel at WalMart.  In the past, we always flew home for his birthday (Feb. 14), but this year we didn't since they are coming for a week starting Saturday.  We are anxious to see them all - they are staying in a small one bedroom unit here at Cypress Palms. We will be going to Disney (Daniel, just turned four, is anxious to see Mickey Mouse) and to Universal Studios (Ben, now 10, is anxious to see the Harry Potter stuff).  We can't wait to see the boys responses to the theme parks.

NOT MINE - TAKEN BY ALLAN THIELE

Glossy ibis, one snowy egret.  We don't see these very often.  Most ibis are white.

Up close, they have purple and pink gloss on the wings.

Hooded merganser.  Uncommon.  New species for me.

Female hooded merganser.

Very fat alligators.  Left one is really big!

Northern shovelers.  Note big bill.  Pushes its 'spatula' bill

through the water to strain out food.  New species for me.

Sleeping ducks on a small island.

Part of a large group of American avocets. 

Note how shallow the water is.

Close-up of avocets.  Notice up-curved bill.

Northern pintail.  You can see where the name comes from.

Young roseate spoonbills (one immature ibis in the middle)

The immature spoonbills have much paler pink color.