BLOG GETS NEW NAME, WE'RE GIVEN AN AWARD AND THE CHICKS GET AGGRESSIVE WITH THE ADULT!

We have changed the name of our blog today. We are no longer JP Bandano Florida Wedding Photographers! Our name is now JP Brandano Florida Photographers (Not your usual Photography Blog). Why the change? Are we not doing weddings anymore?? Yes, we are still doing wedding photography, plus portraiture, family, infants and even pets. But with the move to Florida, we have been photographing much more of nature than before and did not want to confuse people. We still have our web site which is mostly dedicated to the wedding part of our business. We will still be doing postings on weddings and the rest of images non-nature. So not much has changed. We are just having our blog title match the content and not confuse people.

We keep getting people commenting that our blog is not like other photography blogs so we decided to add that to our title. We have purposely made our blog a little different from other photography blogs and appreciate that people have realized that. We want to cover a wide scope of photography but also add other content. We try to use photography and our writings to make a statement that interests, amuses and educates our readers. We do not put all of those points in each posting but we try. We were described as being a little whimsical on our blog. We were happy that people "got it". We want to be amusing, maybe a little off center at times. But we also want to bring the beauty of photography to people. Hopefully, you will continue to feel we are doing just that.

We were really honored to be selected by one of our fellow bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award. We were especially honored because this is the second time in 3 months that we have received this award. Charissa of  SEXY BITCHY FABULOUS http://www.sexybitchyfabulous.blogspot.com/  let us know this morning and we thank her for the honor. I will address it more fully next week in a blog posting devoted just to it.

I was at the nest site this morning at 8:30 and stayed for about 2 hours. When I first arrived only one adult was present, much like yesterday. After a while the other adult showed up and the chicks thought it was time for food. They started grabbing the adult's bill and pulling on it quite forcefully. At one point, both chicks were pulling on it and the adult's head was pulled so low in the nest that I could not see it. At that point, the adult had enough and moved out of the nest over to a nearby limb. I do not think it ever fed either chick. I am not sure if this is part of training the chicks for when it is time to be on their own or not. It would seem to be as the adult is away from the nest quite a bit of the time. I did observe the chicks in the upper nest flapping their wings which is part of the process of learning to fly.

There is a noticeable difference in the size of the chicks in nest two. They are bigger and I would imagine older. They seem more mature and I am guessing they will be leaving the nest soon. Leaving the nest the first few times can be very dangerous for the chicks. As I was watching them today, a local couple started speaking to me. They have lived here for years and said that these nests are here each year. Last year, one of the chicks tried to fly and didn't make it and got itself caught in a branch. It was hanging upside down and eventually died. Nature can be hard on young chicks trying to make it on their own.

      The adult is in the lower nest. I have never seen this nest without an adult present.

      If you look you can see a chick hanging its head over the nest looking down. It stayed this way a long time. I wonder what it was thinking? Something about the first step being a doozy!!!
Finally, the adult showed up in the upper nest. The chicks were very interested!

    You can see the size of the chicks in the upper nest (image above). They are much more developed  
    than the chicks in the lower nest (image below). They do not even look like the same type bird.

                          The two chicks in lower nest are touching bills, something they do a lot.

  You can see that the chicks are grabbing the adult's bill and pulling and twisting it. It might not be
  evident in these images but it was fairly violent actions.

  Here you can see that they pulled the adult's head down into the nest out of sight.

                    At this point the adult had enough and moved to a limb a few feet away.

  She did keep an eye on them and I watched to see if they would follow it to the limb but they did not.

  As I was watching the herons I saw this coming out of the bushes. At first I thought it was a rabbit but I am not that sure. Looks like a mix of a rabbit and a rat!! Anyone knows I would love to hear what it is!