Another day, another trip to the Circle B Bar Reserve. Today was off to a slow start. I had covered about 2/3 of the trails I was going to cover this morning (little over 5 miles total) and hadn’t seen much beyond the normal wading birds and some alligators. At this point as a photographer living in Florida I don’t really stop to photograph gators or our normal birds unless they are doing something out of the ordinary. Finally, walking down the path I spotted something that caught my eye on a small branch hanging over the trail. It turned out to be a praying mantis and was my favorite find of the morning. I photographed him for awhile and pointed him out to a few other people. After moving on I ran across the Sandhill crane colts from my last visit. They are 2 weeks older and probably almost 3x as big as my previous visit. After leaving the Circle B I made a stop at one of those lakes that Lakeland is famous for to check on the swans. Most of them were still sitting on the eggs including one Mute Swan that was sitting on 8 eggs. One baby Black Swan had hatched so I spent a little time with the “Ugly Duckling”. Baby wanted to scoot away from mom but she kept scooting the baby back underneath her using her bill or her wing.