While in Florida last month we spent a day at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. It was all about astronauts, rockets and space exploration that day, but we did see these Black Vultures hanging out by the family/press bleachers. They would’ve had the best seats for the launch, if it hadn’t been scrubbed.

And we saw this Laughing Gull back at the complex, standing close to a digital sign that gave updates on the launch status. Sure, you’ll be at Kennedy for the next launch window (July 11), even if we aren’t. What are you laughing at?

While waiting out the time between the scrubbed STS-127 launches in mid-June, we spent a couple of days around Kissimmee, Florida. One morning we visited Tibet-Butler Preserve in Orlando, a stop on the Great Florida Birding Trail.

Before we were chased out by the man-eating mosquitoes, we followed a bit of the Pine Circle Trail, where we were dwarfed by a forest of Longleaf Pine.

We were interested to read that seedlings of this tree have a so-called “grass stage” where they are easily mistaken for clumps of grass. Is that what we saw on the path, or are these simply fallen needles from the tall trees that surrounded us?

Our lone bird on the short walk was this Red-bellied Woodpecker.

We also glimpsed the greenest lizard I’ve ever seen (my guess – Green Anole [Anolis carolinensis]).

No photos of the mosquitoes but trust me, they were there. Have a great weekend and a safe Independence Day to my fellow Americans, wherever you are. Be sure to check out the other posts submitted for Skywatch Friday this week.

Here are some of the more interesting search terms that brought visitors to this site during June. You can see previous editions of this monthly post here.

One disturbing kind of search that brings visitors to this blog are those that are looking to harm or deter birds. Pigeons were the target last month with searches for anti pigeon gel and pigeons ate poison. Someone also stopped by after searching for bird feeders that ward off large birds.

The most interesting and funny typos for the month were bird house dimentions, fedding oranges to the birds, and morphing owel.

The following ID-related searches also led to this site: looking for a white breasted gray-blue bird found in wisconsin not a nuthatch; did i see a falcon or a hawk in fox valley illinois; do orioles live in illinois. The answers: Blue-grey Gnatcatcher; Yes; Yes.

Future design inspiration came in the form of the search for prairie chicken gifts.

Someone searched for how to find out how visitors came to blog. I use statcounter but there are a lot of similar services out there.

My favorite search for June was bird feeder microphone. Dude, don’t settle for a microphone – you can get a whole video & still bird camera for your feeder!

This week’s highlighted t-shirt for birders is a simple text design that reads Bird Freak. This t-shirt says it all if you’re serious about birds. Shown here on the Baseball Jersey.

One bird we’re always sure of seeing when we visit Florida is the Anhinga. We saw this one bringing a fish back to shore to share with another Anhinga at the Intracoastal Waterway Park on Merritt Island.

The Anhinga is another bird that has a nickname – they are called “snake birds” because of the way they look when swimming. An Anhinga will swim with most of his or her body submerged, with only the long & lean, snakey-looking head and neck exposed. Even when swimming with prey impaled on bill, as in these images, the snake bird lives up to its name.

This Loggerhead Shrike posed for us during our visit to the Nature Conservancy’s Disney Wilderness Preserve near Kissimmee, Florida, earlier this month.

Shrikes are sometimes called “butcher birds” because of the way they handle their prey. Yes, these small birds are actually predators but they lack strong talons to rip apart prey. Instead they use their hooked beaks to rip flesh off of prey which they first impale onto thorns or barbed wire.

We saw shrikes twice during our Florida road trip and both times we scanned nearby fences and trees for possible impaled prey, but we didn’t see any. That’s probably for the best – my old Golden Field Guide has an illustration of a Northern Shrike perched next to an impaled mouse and that’s almost too much for me to take.

For more photos of birds from all around the world, check out the other submissions for this week’s Bird Photography Weekly.

Yesterday Cornell’s nestcams Twitter account posted a link to the CamClickr, a project where citizen scientists can help to tag millions of archived nestcam images. I spent way too much time clicking nestcam images yesterday afternoon!

(unrelated) Western Bluebird Chicks from TheBirdersReport.com Flickr photostream

The site has a tutorial video that clearly explains everything — the basic concept is that users identify and tag images taken from nestcams. Each session is divided into two parts and the whole experience is set up somewhat like a game. In Level 1 you identify 99 images based on the number of eggs, nestlings or adult birds you see. In Level 2 you tag each image based on the behavior seen. Along the way there are opportunities for you to learn more about the species you are working with. When I was tagging Carolina Chickadee nest images, I found one photo that had two adults in it (jackpot!). I wasn’t familiar with two of the behavior types listed, so I clicked on the glossary to learn more:

Allofeeding: A behavioral event where one adult bird feeds another adult of the same species.

Allopreening: A behavioral event where one bird grooms another ibrd of the same species . Also known as allogrooming.

Helping scientists study birds and learning new stuff?! Cool!

Some of the photos are really hard to figure out, but I kinda think that’s part of the fun. The photos from the nestcams seem to be in sequence so if you can figure out what’s going on in one, it helps when looking at adjacent images. Right now the cam images are of nests at the nestling stage, which means lots of photos of little chick blobs and a parent feeding them. Go check it out – when you have some time to kill! CamClickr

They might not be the most graceful species, but this Common Moorhen does an impressive job of walking on water.

One of my all-time favorite bird species is the Eurasian Spoonbill, which is a summer breeder in the Netherlands. In the spring we used to go look for them in their breeding plumage which includes long head plumes and a yellowish breast band.

I was hoping to get good looks at their cousins, the Roseate Spoonbill, when we were in Florida. We only saw them once, flying high up in the sky over Viera Wetlands.

They were flying so high that we couldn’t tell what they were until we got our binoculars on them. Then there was no mistaking their pink bodies and spoon-shaped bills!

For more stories of the sky from around the world, check out the other submissions for this week’s Skywatch Friday.

Typical scene at Viera Wetlands

At Viera Wetlands last week, out of the 30 species we saw, six were lifers.

The Crested Caracara seems to be a symbol of the wetlands as its image was on several of the navigational signs on the roads. Both times we visited, the Caracara was perched in the same tall tree. Both times, we had good looks in bad, bad light. This photo isn’t too hot, but I think that profile is unmistakable. What a beautiful bird!

This Least Bittern was lurking in the reeds but did pop out for some great looks and mediocre photos.

We saw some groups of Mottled Ducks in a few of the ponds.

The Summer Tanager we saw was beautiful, but the photo I got of it was not.

We saw lots of Black-belled Whistling Ducks flying overhead, but rarely saw them in the water – except for the one pictured below. It was totally posing for us! I think this was my favorite bird we saw in Florida. I love the colors on this bird – black, white, brown, taupe, and that bright orangey-red bill.

Finally, we added Loggerhead Shrike to our lifelist. We’ve actually seen this bird before, very badly, at the Nature Conservancy’s Disney Wilderness Preserve in Kissimmee a couple of years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that we noticed it was not recorded on our list. We had really excellent views of a pair of shrikes flying between two trees just a few yards from the car.