Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas!

With one son home, we went down to the St. Mark’s lighthouse and refuge for a Christmas Eve picnic. The holly was full of Christmas cheer.

No, really--- FULL!!

There are whole thickets of holly.

Migratory birds were in there having their own picnic.

As you can see, the prickly pears are still showing off their fruits.

D carefully picked and peeled one and we all tasted it. Very similar to the fruit of a pomegranate, it has much juice and many seeds. The juice stained his hand with festive red streaks.

In addition, we saw ….. (Now, sing along!)

5 sunning gators!

4 million robins,

3 bald eagles,

2 calling loons,

And a dolphin swimming in the bay!

 

Here are a few more pics:

This eagle was facing what might have been posing as the sun on this cloudy day, with its back to the road. It sat preening its feathers and turned its head to check on us. Nice rotation of the neck; rather owl-like.

A lone bufflehead.

It was cool and windy so, we had our picnic in the truck. Grackles came looking for a hand-out. The females are beautiful sable brown.

The males are iridescent blue-black.

A few flew right into the truck bed and on the rails and tailgate.

 

Here are a couple of a good-sized gator; we guessed it was about 7 feet, but it was so close that we  stood in the truck to take it’s picture.

What a great way to wrap up our Christmas preparations!

What a gift!