Manatee mating herd

WOW!!!!! I went kayaking this morning with Lisa (m/v Reel Lucky) and we always seem to have a good time talking and just communing with nature, but this morning we saw something neither of us has ever seen before. Lisa was out on the water by ‘Bird Island’ waiting for me and watched a large number of manatees (10 – 15) swimming right towards her heading for the edge of the island. That in itself was pretty cool since we usually only see one or two at a time. By the time I got out there the manatees had reached the shallows and were in a huge pile and I mean HUGE. We paddled pretty close and got a few pictures. I even had one manatee come right up to the kayak and stick its snout out of the water and look at me – I could have touched it had I not had the camera in my hands. I had heard it is mating season, but didn’t know about mating herds. Came back by the island on our way back to the boats, about 1 1/2 hours later and the ‘pile’ was still in the same place, then broke up abruptly with lots of thrashing and splashing. Glad we weren’t close when that started!

According to the ‘Save the Manatee’ organization this pile generally consists of one female and a dozen or more males. The female swims into shallow water trying to get away from the males. The female is ‘in heat’, so to speak, for up to 3 weeks and the herd will stay with her for the duration.

‘Bird Island’ is a very small bump in the water covered with mangroves and home to hundreds of Pelicans, several species of Herons and Ibis’. It is also breeding season for these birds and since I’ve never seen baby Pelicans I have been watching them with a great deal of interest. The adult Pelicans seem to keep the very young ones covered up and I’ve had to sit there for quite a while just to get a peek at them. They are all getting pretty big now and are fuzzy and white – not grey like the adults. Cute, cute, cute. Got some pictures of them this morning.

Last weekend we saw hundreds of ‘cow nosed rays’ out in the river. There were so many of them that the color of water appeared to be brown.  You guessed it – mating season for them too.  No pictures – sorry.


And that concludes today’s lesson on local wildlife.