Bird Watching in Fort De Soto Park
We have a friend, Colleen, who regularly posts, on facebook, beautiful photographs, from Fort De Soto Park, near St. Petersburg, Florida. Thus for some time now, I have been wanting to venture to her little piece of paradise, and take a look for myself.
When the opportunity presented itself, I did not hesitate, despite a fairly persistent rain.
This majestic blue heron is stoically enduring the storm.
There is a break in the rain, now you go your way and I will go mine.
Pelicans!
He is soaked, and none too happy to see me.
The park was everything which Colleen’s pictures and comments promised. Not only did it provide a respite in nature; but also a lesson in history. The area encompassed by the park was once home to Tocobaga Indians, a stop for Spanish explores, surveyed by the Robert E. Lee, while still in service to the United States, who recommended that the area be fortified for military purposes, occupied by Union troops during the Civil War, was used as a quarantine station, served as a proper fort during the Spanish-American War, and used for practice by the pilots, who eventually bombed Hiroshima – not too shabby for a piece of paradise.
I had no idea, before reading their website that the park had the only fort 12 inch seacoast rifled mortars, in the United States, but am glad I checked them out!
As we left the park — a pink spoonbill.
