I spent last Sunday morning at the Circle B Bar Reserve. Boy it feels good to get back out there! I was happy to find lots and lots of Roseate Spoonbills still hanging around off the Wading Bird Way trail. I counted over 100! These beautiful birds are some of my favorite ones to photograph. […]
It’s been ages since I’ve been to Circle B. It’s sad…I used to go there every weekend, at least! So it felt great to spend the morning on Wading Bird Way. The water levels are really really low. Half of the “lake” is now a mud flat. But the good thing is that the low […]
After spending a cloudy morning cooped up in the house yesterday, the sun came out and I decided to head to Merritt Island to experiment with afternoon light at the Blackpoint Wildlife Drive. It was less windy than the previous day, and the birds were closer to the trail. The afternoon light was incredible! I […]
I got some good news a few days ago…one of my pictures was selected as a winner in the St. Augustine Alligator Farm annual photo contest! I received a letter about a week ago, but they didn’t tell me at that time which was my winning photo (I submitted several). So I had to wait […]
After hearing on Birdbrains about the early fall migrants at Viera Wetlands, I had to make a trip over there. The wetlands itself was very unproductive, with not even the Purple Gallinules showing themselves to me. No Black-bellied Whistling Ducks greeted me, either. But over in the Click Ponds, there was a ton of activity. […]
To see if the water level on the other side was higher! It wasn’t… I’ve never seen the water levels at Circle B Bar Reserve this low. We hiked the Wading Bird Way trail this morning. We got there at sunrise and got in two hours of photography before the rains drove us away. It’s […]
After a sunrise with the Least Terns, Michael and I headed up to the Alligator Farm for another few hours of photographing. For once I was happy that it was cloudy. It kept the temperature cooler and let me take shots that are usually very backlit in the mornings. The rookery is definitely starting to […]
Dyeyo and I spent a nice Father’s Day morning with Herman at his rookery in Polk County. That’s always such a fun place to go. Herman’s little portable boat is awesome for floating between the islands and observing the birds. We started the morning with a Least Bittern – what a way to start the […]
This morning I was off to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge (MINWR) in search of baby Black-Necked Stilts. I’d seen a very photographable nest there last weekend, and I was hoping to see chicks there today. At first I was disappointed – the nest was deserted. But I drove around some more and found some […]
I drove up to St. Augustine this morning to visit the St. Augustine Alligator farm rookery. There are babies everywhere! I didn’t spend much time on flight shots today, instead concentrating on making good images of babies. It’s hard to do that, with all the sticks and branches and nesting material everywhere. Next time I […]
Herman took my dad and me out in his boat again this morning. The Polk Rookery has changed considerably since my last visit in March. Then the birds were building their nests, and Great Egrets, Wood Storks dominated the Brazilian Pepper. Today the rookery was filled with fledgling birds of all sorts: Roseate Spoonbills, Great […]
I drove up to St. Augustine to spend my off-Friday at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm‘s bird rookery. It’s right at peak season and the rookery, and the activity is awesome! Some Great Egrets are still building nests, others have tiny babies, and still more have fledglings who know how to leave the nest but […]
Happy Mother’s Day! Dyeyo and I spent a few hours at the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning before going to spend some time with my mom. It seemed appropriate that we saw a bunch of baby birds with their moms today. :) We hiked the Alligator Alley loop this morning, starting just after sunrise. […]
Dyeyo and I couldn’t take it anymore. People on the Birdbrains mailing list have been going on and on this week about all the birds at Viera Wetlands. So we drove out there this morning to see all the birds. It was a beautiful sunny, slightly breezy morning, and it was awesome to be outside […]
After hearing time after time about how great the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is, Dyeyo decided that he wanted to go with me and see it. It was a pretty foggy morning, but the sun burned off the fog just as we arrived at the refuge around 8:30. The Birdbrains have been saying that […]
I couldn’t take it any more…after seeing picture after picture on the new Alligator Farm Rookery blog, I had to make the trip up to St. Augustine! My best shot of the morning was this Roseate Spoonbill in flight. He flew into the “sweet spot” of open sky with perfect sun, and the light glistening […]
Our friend Herman took Dyeyo and me out on his little boat this morning to a rookery in Polk County. It was so amazing! Unlike the Gatorland Rookery and the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Rookery, this one is totally wild. There were hundreds of birds there, most of them sporting their breeding plumages. We saw […]
Dyeyo and I were at the Circle B Bar Reserve at dawn this morning. It was a bit chilly at first, but it felt so great to be outside! The fog obscured the sunrise a bit, which turned out to be good, since I got this picture as a result: We hiked the Heron Hideout […]
Bitterns were the highlight this morning at the Circle B Bar Reserve. I arrived at sunrise, and the cloudcover was much greater than the weatherman’s “Mostly Sunny” forecast. The sun shone on the landscape for about fifteen minutes, then it went behind clouds for most of the “golden light hour.” I didn’t hike as much […]
Dyeyo and I tried something a little different this morning. We arrived at the Circle B Bar Reserve about fifteen minutes before sunrise, and we parked in the lot right at the entrance to the reserve. Then we hiked out to Wading Bird Way on the Windmill Whisper trail. We got to the crossroads right […]