These shots are from our second meeting with the female and her ‘crew’. She tends to be in the same general area surrounded by young of different ages.
There were less young around, maybe a dozen, and all of similar size. Maybe some older ones have moved on.
She watched us close but never once made a threatening move. She really didn’t need to, she’s intimidating enough.
I don’t know how many breeding females are around here. Not sure I want to know considering how many little ones she has.
At first he was swimming along as I walked on the dike, keeping pace with me. In a bit the tables turned and I kept up with him looking for a different angle in the photographs.
I think it confused him.
At some point he stopped and and watched me, wondering what was going on.
Tired of the game he left. I did get a little more than a bobbing head shot though.
You don’t want to step in the middle of this…
Two weeks ago I found ‘Mom’ with over 30 young ones. There were far less the other day when I spotted her, however some may have been in reeds or moved off on their own.
This was a ‘Pile O Gators’.
Appears like they always need to know what is going on.
I was minding my own business photographing a landscape. Swam over to check me out.
When they do this there’s no intent other than to float around and watch. Once you figure out what they are actually doing it’s pretty funny.
While moving to catch up with a few Spoonbills I stumbled on this Little Blue.
While not the best day for photography the colors were on display in a few of the shots.
Most times the different shades, especially the magenta neck feathers, all look to be a dark slate blue.
The third article of a series, Tired Mom.
The image above shows the smaller members of the ‘Alligator Clan’. The larger young in article 2 (click here to view) were on the other side of the water, in those reeds. If you view this image full size you can spot them in the taller grass in the background.
Based on their size I would guess about 1 year old.
Above is Mom resting on the far side of this small stream.
The last image here is of a few smaller ones that were closest to me. If you have read the other 2 previous articles you can see why the exact count of her young was never determined. Too many, too active.
This is a continuation of the ‘Tired Mom’ series.
I had written the young Alligator were everywhere, this is just one spot along the water line. Heads, legs, tails, all over.
Mom was watching, but not much more.
Hard to believe but there may have been twice as many between this group and me. They will published in the next set. Pretty amazing.
I’ve seen Alligators with their young, but not like this.
All I can say is…poor Mom. There were kids everywhere.
She must be very protective. We were just watched, very closely, but no problems. However she has kept a large number safe.
Above is a one year old hanging around near Mom.
This will be a multi article series. There were too many different places and types of her young to be in one post.
Recently the WordPress servers have been slow with images, and using galleries for groups of images display poorly on many sites I have seen. That said, the pages will be smaller until the issues are resolved.
