Yesterday evening I decided to head out to the cattle egret rookery to see if there were any chicks yet. The last time I was there quite a few birds were sitting on nests while others were building nests and pairing up. I was hopeful that some of the early nesters would have small chicks. Most of the birds were still sitting on eggs, but there were a couple nests that had tiny fluff balls in them. Unfortunately, they’re still too small to see much but small amounts of movement in the nest. Since the chicks are still to small to photograph, I decided to get some photos of some of the birds coming and going from the area. Even though it’s a cattle egret rookery, a number of other wetland birds also roost there including great egrets, anhingas, and quite a few white ibis (Eudocimus albus). This small group of ibis flew right in front of the early sunset, and it was too pretty not to try to capture. Just a few minutes later the sun dipped down below that cloud and was a huge orange ball in the sky that gave everything bright golden glow. It would have been great to have had some birds fly in front of that, but at least last night, it wasn’t meant to be. But I’ll be back before long because those little fluff balls will be growing by leaps and bounds now that they’ve started to arrive.