A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens
Life on my own, on the Nature Coast of Florida, and beyond…
Actually I’d been hearing that call for a while now, so it was silly of me to wait until daylight savings was in effect making me rush more than I’d have had to just the week before. The weather report said cloudy all day, but I walked out my front door to check for myself and saw that there were breaks in the clouds, so off I went. I guess it goes without saying that I was glad I rousted myself out. It was a beautiful morning.
A couple of weeks ago one of the photo club members was at Myakka River State Park and saw a flock of Roseate Spoonbills fly in. “A hundred”, he said. His pictures were amazing, and ever since then ‘Spoonies’ have been on my mind. A very fun Octoberfest party in Myakka City was just the excuse we needed to head to the park ourselves. We went this morning, and after driving the whole park it became obvious that if I was going to get any sort of pictures of the spoonies I was going to have to walk a very wet and squishy path. But I was happy to see them at least. When I got into the car and looked at my pictures I lamented that the turkey vultures had photo bombed the pictures. Earlier in the day I had said that I’m not a detail person, and when I got the pictures into the computer I saw who else had photo bombed the pictures and proved my point. How did I miss that alligator, and why did all the birds just hang around with him?
There are many parks within a couple of hours of home that we can go to see birds now that the migration season is upon us.
Thankfully I still have my desktop computer to use while I figure out the laptop, iPad, and external drive. Which is why I didn’t worry about it and headed to the Nature Coast Botanical Garden yesterday. The first thing to see is the crane carving that is still under construction. It seemed more detailed to me, but while I was taking pictures I was hearing some loud chattering in the nearby trees. It sounded like I was being scolded, and I had to hunt before I saw who was unhappy with me. You can see him too, that’s the squirrel in the feature photo. Maybe the tree that is being carved into the statue used to be his home.
I peeked out my front door to see what the sky looked like the other day, and I saw a bright crescent moon hanging low in the dark western sky. I should have taken that picture because the shot I thought I’d get in Aripeka didn’t materialize. The cloud cover there hid the moon, and most of the color from the sunrise also. But I saw Fred, my favorite one-footed great blue heron, who hadn’t put in an appearance in a while. You can’t tell it’s him from my pictures, but occasionally he would lift his right leg out of the water and suspected it was him, and it was confirmed as he suddenly flew out of the water and towards the house down the street where breakfast was apparently being served.
I think I have finally outsmarted myself. I have new hardware, my iPad, and upgraded software with an upgrade to IOS and an upgrade to Adobe Lightroom, which means that I already had lots to learn. Doing things as I was used to doing them wasn’t going to work until I figured out a few things. Then my external hard drive, the one that holds all the pictures I’ve taken while traveling over the last few years, seems to be done. Kaput. I’ve learned so much since I joined my photo group, I’ve hung on our photo guru’s every word, except for the part where he said to always back up to more than one device. Sigh. Nothing’s ever easy.
I missed a very pretty sunset the other night, which may be why I rousted myself out the next morning for a walk at sunrise. The feature photo is the view as I arrived at the park a half hour early for the sunrise. It was still dark, but the lights in the houses looked so pretty, especially the ones directly across the water. The broken clouds in the sky gave me hope that the sunrise colors would show up, but they didn’t. What I did see out there were upside-down birds. Reflections in the water, of birds that I couldn’t see against the shadows of the weeds behind them. But the refections were clear as a bell. So that amused me. I was disappointed not to see chalk drawings on the pavement. If there had been some the rain overnight had washed them away. I’m thinking of getting some sidewalk chalk and leaving messages of my own…
I’m happy to say that my Lightroom problem was operator error, pointed out to me by my friend. It was fixed with a simple click. It’s good to have friends who know their way around a camera, and/or Lightroom.
The other day it dawned on me that it’s been quite a while since I checked up on Riplee. You remember him, the baby orangutan who was born last November 15th, so he is nearly a year old. I think that each time I’ve been back to ZooTampa I’ve hoped to see him displaying his own baby-orangutan self, but up until yesterday each visit had him still in his mother’s arms. The infancy lasts longer than I might have thought. But this visit, I hoped, would be different. And it was.
After taking many, many pictures we decided to walk through the rest of the zoo to see what we could see, but when we returned we found that Dee Dee and her mother were sitting side by side up on a large post with their backs to us. Riplee was between them, holding onto two ropes and appearing to be wishing to climb them. Now this was the sort of photo I’d been hoping for the last few times I’d been to the zoo.
This little guy will be so much fun to continue to visit. If orangutans hadn’t already been a favorite of mine they certainly would be now.
A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens 