outdoor photography

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...

American Avocet I decided to spend my last morning of 2013 at Marl Bed Flats, which is my favorite place for birding in Seminole Co. during the winter months.  I was hoping for Long-billed Dowitchers, which have avoided me successfully all year.  Shortly after arriving, I found an American Avocet, which is very unusual here.  I've hoped for an avocet here, but never really expected to find one.  Then two Long-billed Dowitchers landed right near the Avocet.  It was so great to get all three birds in the same frame!  I spent most of my time here looking for shorebirds, and other fun finds here were Killdeer, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, a Dunlin, Least Sandpipers, and many Wilson's Snipe. The usual suspects were also here: lots of wading birds, House, Carolina and Sedge Wrens, Bonaparte's Gull, Forster's and Caspian Terns, and a Sora. Long-billed Dowitchers and an American Avocet Unless something wonderful happens this evening, my Seminole Co. lis...

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...

Snowy Owl My father and I drove up to see the Snowy Owl at Little Talbot Island State Park that was seen yesterday. It's a beautiful bird! Apparently I saw one in Eureka, CA when I was a kid, but I don't remember seeing it, so it's not on my list. This is a lifer for me. It was hanging out on the beach by a fallen palm tree, and then later it flew toward the water. It was windy and pouring down rain most of the time we were there, and even the shelters provided little relief from the rain with all the wind; my clothes were soaked, but it was worth it. We kept our distance from the owl, so these photos are pretty heavily cropped. Snowy Owl If you go to visit the owl, it's pretty easy to find. Drive to the south parking lot and look for the birders. There's a road that continues south past the parking lot. You can follow that road to where it turns toward the beach; when the road hits the sand, you should be able to have good views of the owl if it hasn...

Monk Parakeets About a week ago I found some Monk Parakeets at an electrical substation near my home.  This is one of those birds I thought I'd never see in Seminole Co, but I saw about 15 here a couple weeks ago, and then 25 of them this morning in the same location. I spoke to someone who works at the substation for a few minutes, and he said their nests get so large they can cause power outages, so they periodically need to get permits to remove one or some of the nests. He said there may be 30 of them in there when they remove the nests. I can't get very close to the power lines for photographs, so these are pretty heavily cropped. Maybe one day I'll ask for permission to go on the property and take photos, but I doubt I'll get it. There are over 100,000 Monk Parakeets in Florida alone, all of which are descendants of escaped pets. Unlike most parrots and parakeets, they are from a temperate climate of Argentina, which makes them more able to sustain populations...

Osprey On Saturday I attended the Wekiva River Christmas Bird Count. I'm just now getting around to working on the photographs, though.  My wife was in a car accident that evening, and she's been in the hospital ever since.  It's not as bad as that sounds, though.  Her main injury was a broken foot, and it needs surgery, but she has so much swelling that they're waiting for it to go down before operating.  So life's a little crazy at home.  This evening, though, I have a little time to work on some photos from the CBC.  While at Lake Monroe looking for gulls and terns, we saw this Osprey perched not far away, and it seemed rather curious about me.  As I walked to where I'd get a decent background, it just followed me with its eyes, and then it did this little head-tilt thing.  I've seen them do this many times before and it always cracks me up.  It seems to me to be a look of curiosity, but I don't know for sure. At any rate, it wasn't ph...

White Peacock I had a great time at Marl Bed Flats yesterday.  The birds there did not cooperate for photographs, but I did get to see my first Dunlin in Seminole Co.  That was pretty fun. The spiders and butterflies were much more cooperative though. On the way out, I found a couple Red-femured Spotted Orbeavers with their nets across the path. One was in the sunlight, and I had fun trying to capture the rim light on the spider and webbing. On the way back, a White Peackock butterfly sat in the sun for me.  All in all, it was a good morning. Red-femured Spotted Orbweaver Red-femured Spotted Orbweaver Red-femured Spotted Orbweaver