Archives
Header Image: Brown-headed Nuthatch “Rubber Ducky!” We were meandering along the forest road toward Lake Godwin, a small lake surrounded by Longleaf Pine trees and Saw Palmetto understory. Gini’s sharp ears heard the squeaky calls of Brown-headed Nuthatches as they foraged among the tops of the pines. Late summer finds these gregarous birds remaining in loose family groups, sometimes with two or three families intermingled. In typical nuthatch fashion, the little birds… Read More
Header Image: Florida Scrub Jay It was a dark and stormy night. The day was bad, too. The last few days of September saw Hurricane Ian gain incredible strength in the Gulf of Mexico before roaring ashore in southwest Florida at nearly a Category 5 level with winds around 150 mph. Five months later, many areas of that beautiful coast are still reeling from the amount of damage the storm caused. Some… Read More
Header Image: Ruby-crowned Kinglet Apparently, we did not exhaust ourselves enough during the Lakeland Christmas Bird Count so we volunteered to participate in the Green Swamp count. Twenty people. Over 500,000 acres of swamp. Challenging! Gini and I were assigned to the East Tract of the Green Swamp Wildlife Management Area which consisted of a mere 51,000 acres. The vast majority of this area is inaccessible. The Christmas census is designed to… Read More
Header Image: Lake Godwin Moonset “Every day should start this way.” Gini’s simple statement was not only profound but a goal worth striving toward. About an hour earlier, we were on the shore of Lake Godwin, a small freshwater impoundment within the Arbuckle Tract of Lake Wales Ridge State Forest. The moon was descending beyond a line of pine trees. As the sun rose behind us, our surroundings took on a golden… Read More
Our Natural Places 