11/4 Boat Watching at St. Lucie Lock & Dam Campground

I've spent most of the last couple of days working indoors, but watching boats go by outside. Mostly, they are cruisers with couples doing much as we RVers are doing, enjoying a few days of vacation or travel.  Today, I took some photos of a few of the boats waiting on the river just in front of me for the lock to be ready for them.

This is one of the four waiting boats. 

 
And another waiting near the boats parked for the night in the campground mooring area.

 
And a third.

And a fourth!  They will all fit into this large lock as soon as it is empty of boats coming the opposite direction.

Lock is emptying and here comes a little tugboat!

And the line of boats head into the dam.  I'll take more photos tomorrow.

And here are the local vultures, roosting for the night in a nearby dead tree!

 

To end, I have to tell you about a vulture I once met.  I was visiting a bird sanctuary near Sarasota.  It was very quiet there with no other visitors. I stopped by a cage with a pair of black vultures. They are all black and smaller than the more common turkey vultures above. I stood close to the cage and the one bird kept looking at me and cocking his head.  Finally, he dropped down from his perch, walked over and picked up an orange squeaky rubber pumpkin, brought it over to me, and dropped in on the ground right in front of me!  Really.  He had brought me a toy.  I think I must have resembled one of his keepers, but it showed me he had more than the usual "bird brain."  I need to go back there when I am in Myakka before Christmas. Lots of cranes there with artificial legs.