outdoor photography

Lincoln's Sparrow Canal St, Feb 2013 I didn't intend to attempt a Seminole Co. big year this year.  I intended to do at least a little birding every day, and since I have a little time before work, I tended to stick to Seminole Co. on most work days, with an occasional venture into Orange County to visit Mead Gardens or Wekiwa Springs.  On the weekends, I wanted to chase birds within about an hour's drive of my home.  But as finances became tight and time became limited, I found myself concentrating more and more on Semnole County. Eventually I decided to see if I could hit 200 in the year, and then once I did, I just had to keep going. Philadelphia Vireo Central Winds Park, Oct 2013 I believe my county is under-birded compared to neighboring counties (Orange, Lake, Brevard, Volusia). Seminole Co is small and filled with suburbs. It's inland so there's no coastline, and there's surprisingly few places to look for shorebirds.  But something about that...

Brown-crested Flycatcher Lake Apopka, FL It's been a pretty fun birding year.  I began this year with two birding goals: get my Florida life list up to 300 species and my life lists for Seminole, Orange and Brevard Counties up to 200 species each.  But as the year progressed, my desires for the year changed.  I decided to concentrate more on my home county, Seminole and see if I could get 200 species in Seminole Co. in one year. Whooping Crane Near Joe Overstreet Rd, FL As I concentrated more on Seminole Co, I went out to Orange and Brevard Co less frequently (I'm planning another post on Seminole County). I made almost all my goals: 2013 Life Florida 280 304 Seminole Co. 209 215 Orange Co. 177 207 Brevard Co. 138 197 Snowy Owl Little Talbot Island SP, FL Tropical Kingbird St. Armands Circle, FL I also added a total of 71 species to my life list this year, not including 3 exotics tha...

Open Gallery View This was a very fun year. I found many new places to visit for photography, many of which were right near my home. I'm finding that I'm becoming increasingly a local photographer, spending most of my time within an hour's drive of my home and often within my own county. There are some notable exceptions, though. I took a few longer drives in FL to see rarities, like a Tropical Kingbird on the Gulf Coast and a Snowy Owl in Jacksonville. These are my favorite Florida bird photos of the year. I could only narrow it down to 50, which may take a while to view, so if you'd prefer to see the whole gallery at once, just click on the  Open Gallery View  link to see them on my SmugMug site. There's another advantage of viewing them there--you can see the species name in the titles.  Unfortunately, SmugMug hasn't yet figured out how to show you the photo title on an embeded slideshow; they only let you show the caption, which I use for the photo...