Category: friends

a second look, birds, egrets, Florida wildlife, friends, fun, nature, Nature's beautiful creatures, perseverance, photography

4th times a charm…

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Finally. Little bobbleheads popping up in the nests. We struck out the first few times we headed to one rookery or the other. Now both are blooming with babies, with more to come. Lots of fun for the photographers in the area.

It took a while to spot the chicks in this tucked-away nest.
A photographer recently pointed out their slightly prehistoric look. I have to agree. Egret chick.
Mom and Dad’s pride and joy. Wood storks.
This seemed to be the biggest baby we saw.
I find these little wood stork babies to be so cute. Or maybe it’s in comparison to their adult selves.
There are two of them.
Cormorants on their favorite stump.
Snowy egrets are there. We hear their funny calls. But their nests are tucked into the low branches too far to hope for a photo.
Stay tuned for more babies. Possibly on easier to see nests.
'scene' along the way, a second look, adventure, Florida landmarks, Florida wildlife, friends, fun, nature, Nature's beautiful creatures, Owls, Pedaling Along, perseverance, photography

In search of…

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I think we just wanted to get out and ride the trike and scooter, and take whatever pictures came our way, so it was off to John Chestnut Park. Now that I’ve seen gators in the park I apparently can’t go there without seeing them. It was a little one, but not so little that I didn’t cut off the end of his tail in my feature photo.

Dragonflies were landing on the leaves in the water near the alligator. Not a great picture but I’m glad they are back and zipping around.
This grackle flew from branch to branch keeping the walkers, and riders, company. And yapping at us to give him a treat.
This red bellied woodpecker was just doing it’s thing, ignoring the people who were gathering and taking pictures of the nearby barred owl.
Two people had to point us in the right direction to find this guy. I’m told his name is North. Yes, I probably could have tried to take that stick out of the picture, but but I surrendered before I drove myself nuts trying.
So he was playing a little joke on us? Hiding in plain sight.
There you go. Where’s Waldo?

We talked to a fun gentleman on the fishing pier and I told him that we had been seeing pictures of owls taken in the park. He immediately took out his phone and showed us some of his photos. He said they are everywhere, just keep your eyes open.But he said I had asked the right person because he was the president of the SOS, Secret Owl Society. Says he has a tee shirt with that title emblazoned across his chest, only the ‘O’ is an Owl face. Then he told us where to head, only when you are talking about riding on the trails it’s easy to get confused. But when you see people gathering and taking pictures that’s a good sign.

a second look, adventure, birds, butterflies, Chinsegut Conservation Center, exploring new places, Florida wildlife, friends, fun, gardens, nature, Nature Coast Botanical Gardens, Nature's beautiful creatures, nesting, perseverance, photography

Beautiful day, part 2…

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Only it was really part 1, because I have a few images from my second trip to Chinsegut Conservation Center in just a week or so. That was our first stop, since it was the farthest north we intended to go. When we got there the feeders were being loaded up, again. The gal said that they’d been filled up the night before and were empty already. It didn’t take long for the birds to get to work on emptying them again. That’s a red bellied woodpecker in the feature photo.

Another Mrs. Cardinal enjoying the suet that was also refilled that morning.
She posed while waiting her turn.
Birds of a feather eat together. Pine Warblers.
They love the suet.
Yes, I think the pine warblers outnumbered everyone else.

Heading south we stopped at the Nature Coast Botanical Garden next, and wandered to the music by a band that was playing in a little gazebo next to the train garden. We saw the train make its last trip around the track before being put away for another week. But I found the waterfalls at the garden to be especially pretty that day.

Plus a butterfly, which made me happy to see.

Stop number 3 was to see what was happening at the eagle nest. The two ‘babies’ were on their own while we were there. But a couple who were just leaving said that one of the adults had just been up in the tree keeping an eye on them.

There seemed to be some tidbits in the nest for them to be snacking on.
This was all the action we saw from them, and we didn’t wait for a parent to return,

Our last stop of the day was at the rookery, and those were the pictures I posted yesterday. This morning we watched a live streamed photography class given for our photography club. And I’ve got a book I need to get back to…

a second look, birds, friends, fun, nature, Nature's beautiful creatures, perseverance, photography, ZooTampa

At the zoo…

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No, we didn’t go back to the zoo, but I did get distracted by so many other photo ops we were lucky enough to have in a short period of time and missed some fun animals. I showed you the orangutans, because they usually make up half the shots I take at the zoo. But there were other notable creatures to see.

Imagine my surprise to see a white spoonbill. A Eurasian spoonbill, who was’t the best at posing for a picture.
He did better here, posing with a scarlet ibis.
We see ibis everywhere here, but not this scarlet variety. Their coloring comes from the crustaceans which they eat in tropical South America and the Caribbean.
And this is a shoebill stork, who stood close enough to the front of the enclosure that it was hard to get a picture of his whole, 5 foot tall self! Somehow he seemed bigger than the other birds we see that are almost as tall as he was. But he has a sturdier build, and he looks so much bigger. They are from the swamps of eastern tropical Africa where they eat big fish, like lungfish, eels, and catfish. As well as Nile monitor lizards, snakes, and baby crocodiles. Another odd trait is that they poop on their own legs. It cools them off. They couldn’t print it if it wasn’t true, right?
The sign said shoe billed heron, but when I googled that it just brought me to the big shoebills.
I was shooting through the same sort of fencing that you see in the background here, but the camera can focus on the owls and ignore the fencing, at least some of the time. Barred owls.
We finally saw the binturong. He came to the zoo and took over the enclosure where the clouded leopard used to drape himself over a big branch and allow for all of us to take great pictures of him. So we looked at this guy as an interloper, except that we hardly looked at him at all because he wasn’t usually visible. Until I lightened my picture quite a bit in Lightroom you couldn’t really see him in this picture either. They live in the trees, climbing well but not fast, and eat everything. That’s what omnivore means, right?
I shot these lorikeets through their enclosure netting also. They made one cute pose after another and I worried that I wouldn’t get decent pictures, but they turned out okay. Choosing which cute shot to use was the problem.
Doesn’t this guy look happy? I don’t know why because he shares an enclosure with what appears to be a couple of needle-nosed alligators, but they seem to have come to a meeting of the minds.
Just a hippo, um, make that an Asian rhino.
This is a Schmidt’s red-tailed monkey. His tail is longer than he is. So cute with a nice yellow heart on it’s face.

There is no story to the duckling in the feature photo, it’s just cute! But it is being raised in the zoo. What a lucky duck!

'scene' along the way, a second look, attitude adjustments, Florida landmarks, friends, fun, old dogs new tricks, perseverance, photography, Rise and shine, technology

Off to the races…

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We were up early on Saturday to get to a black and white photography class, but we also had to race from there to the Tampa Bay Downs to host a photo op for the club. Both things on the same day was a lot, and we were late getting to the track, but so was the only other person to show up. We had extra time before the first race however, so we got some lunch, and after that I was more ready for a nap than anything. But I was armed with the new 1.4 extender for my r7 camera and the 100-400 lens, so when the first race began I raced up to the balcony to get my one and only shot with that lens.

From the balcony and with the extra reach from the extender this is my shot of the far turn. From there it’s right down the final stretch to the finish line.
Back downstairs again I decided to switch to the 18-150 lens because the camera is so light with that lens on, and I was tired and hot. 90 degrees in February? I amused myself between races by taking pictures of the pretty flowers around the winners circle.
Without as much reach with my smaller lens I found like liked the view that included some of the scene as well as the start of the next race. I like to try to get an out of the gates shot, And I’m glad I did this time. Look at where horse #8 is.
From the balcony you have time to go inside the grandstand and shoot a picture of the finish line from that upstairs angle. And look, the winner was #8!
This is another winner, and it was the #8 horse in this race too!
Here’s the big picture. You can people watch from the balcony vantage point. And you can see the paddock area where the horses are brought out and the jockeys mount them before they are led onto the track for their race.

The feature photo shows you how futile it would be for me to shoot from the rail. I’m too short and there are several layer of fencing that would wind up in my shot. But in this case I saw that I could see the finish line sign between the people so I took the shot. Possibly my favorite shot of the day.

a second look, adventure, birds, egrets, Florida wildlife, friends, fun, live and learn, nature, Nature's beautiful creatures, nesting, perseverance, photography, road trip

The Vienna Rookery…

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Photographers are told that you ought to visualize the photo you want to take ahead of time. I’m not sure that they mean on the drive to your destination however. I had no problem visualizing the rookery full of great blue heron nests, with babies calling out to be fed and their parents flying in and out. But when we got there I could only see a couple of nests with great blue herons standing at attention minding the nests.

This is the first shot I took. Ah, thought I, Dad on guard, and that pile of feathers to the left must be Mom, laying on eggs.
But the pile of feathers turned out to be these two ‘chicks’. Not little balls of fluff. And I now thought that maybe that was Mom, keeping an eye on things out out of reach of the little darlings.
They were flapping those wings too, thinking of the places they’ll go.
They were yapping at her, but she didn’t seem to be impressed.
There are other ways to get your other’s attention however.
The great blue herons were outnumbered by the great white egrets. And the egrets were still in the nest building and posing stage of things. Just like in the rookeries much closer to home.

I was told that we were a month late to see the great blue herons at the just hatched stage. And we think that our kids grow up too fast. But then there will be a new family to raise next year, and we’ll come back in January.