outdoor photography

Swallow-tailed Kite This month eBird is encouraging birders try new places this month. Their challenge for this month is to visit 15 new locations this month.  I thought that sounded like a good challenge and set my sights on finding some new places to visit.  Wirz Park is on my way home, and it's already listed as a hotspot on eBird, but I've never been there before. It was the hotspot with the lowest total in Seminole Co. (16 species). I wasn't expecting much when I visited. However, I was very pleasantly surprised.  It's a nice-looking park, and there was a nature loop that includes a boardwalk and a trail that follows a stream. If you walk the loop and walk around the park itself, you'll walk about a mile. In my one visit on March 15 I recorded 37 species for eBird, raising the total for the hotspot up to 43. I think there's a fair amount of potential here, and it may even be a decent place to look for migrants over the next month or two. Highlights ...

Swallow-tailed Kite This morning I drove out to Dade City to look for Mississippi Kites that were seen there yesterday. I got there around 8:30 am, and by around 9:30 am, the area was swarming with at least 40 Swallow-tailed Kites.  Then off in the distance, I saw my first Mississippi Kite.  It was very far away; one person with a scope was able to identify it, and one of my photos worked well enough as an ID shot, but it was just too far away for presentable photos.  But that was a lifer for me nonetheless.  The Swallow-tailed Kites were much more photogenic, and a couple  flew pretty close to us in search of prey.  I've never seen so many Swallow-tailed Kites in one place. Most were flying low over the grasses, allowing for some photos of the kites with green backgrounds. Swallow-tailed Kite  I'm always amazed at how well they use their tails. They can rotate them almost vertically as they're turning. After they capture their prey, you can ...

Swallow-tailed Kite I thought it would be good to prepare galleries of my favorite species of wildlife, mostly birds, of course, but certainly not limited to that.  Most of these posts won't contain any text (and eventually I'll probably delete the text from this post too).  Really I just want collect my favorite photos of a species on a single page.  I'll then organize the pages into a gallery so that people can find photos of their favorite species as well. By the way, it's come to my attention that some people have been unable to comment using Internet Explorer.  I believe I've fixed the problem (it was forcing the document type to IE7), but if you encounter any problems, please let me know.  If you click on my "About Me" profile, it should let you message me. Swallow-tailed Kite Swallow-tailed Kite Swallow-tailed Kite Swallow-tailed Kite