Another beautiful morning in the Smokies and we have a busy day planned. On Saturday we bicycled the loop road in the isolated valley tucked in the mountains called Cades Cove. There isolated structures remain of a remote agricultural community that developed in the mid 1800’s and was purchased by the National Park Service in the 1930’s. Many of the structures that remain are primitive of log and rough-cut lumber.

This heron is a subspecies of the Great Blue Heron only found in the Florida Keys. He is much lighter in color and the head is white.

Bridled terns are only seen at sea. We have seen them resting on floating objects as in this photo.

The bird on the right is a juvenile red footed booby, rarely seen in North American, and fortnately seen in the Dry Tortugas this year. The other birds are frigate birds which nest at Garden Key.

A secretive bird, not usually seen sitting peacefully, most often visualized at night flying and swooping to catch insects.