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Our Day of Summer – Part Two

(Click on images to enlarge, click again to zoom.) The red clay road is still damp along the edges from yesterday’s brief rain shower. Pine trees provide that fresh scent only they can manufacture. Blue sky, no breeze, no man-made sounds. We pause and sigh as one. Ancient geological phenomena make the Lake Wales Ridge one of our very favorite places to visit. This unique ecosystem is covered with a mosaic of… Read More

Category: Birds, Flora, Florida, Insects, Photography Tags: american white waterlily, brown-headed nuthatch, darrow's blueberry, eastern towhee, golden-winged skimmer, grassy arrowhead, halloween pennant, lake godwin, lake wales ridge, pipevine swallowtail, purple bladderwort, tall elephantsfoot, tenangle pipewort, winged sumac, yellow milkwort, zebra swallowtail

Early One Summer Morning

(Click on images to enlarge, click again to zoom.) The turn-off is immediately after the bridge. I almost always miss it and have to do a U-turn. One problem is the highway is a shortcut for 18-wheelers heading for Interstate 75, typically from Interstate 4 to the south. The road saves them quite a bit of time as they don’t have to travel to where the two expressways intersect on the edge… Read More

Category: Birds, Flora, Florida, Insects, Photography Tags: amanda's pennant, bar-winged skimmer, eastern black swallowtail, golden-winged skimmer, green swamp, loblolly bay, peelbark st. john's wort, pine savanna, pitted stripeseed, roseate skimmer, roundpod st. john's-wort, showy milkwort, spotted orbweaver, tarflower, tufted titmouse

Swamp Sojourn

Header Image: Pine Flatwoods Dawn “And far as the eye of God could seeDarkness covered everything,Blacker than a hundred midnightsDown in a cypress swamp. Then God smiled,And the light broke,And the darkness rolled up on one side,And the light stood shining on the other,And God said: That’s good!” (From The Creation by James Weldon Johnson.) We often visit the swamp. Florida has quite a few areas which meet the definition of a… Read More

Category: Flora, Florida, Insects, Photography Tags: golden-winged skimmer, green swamp, horsetail, orchard orbweaver, pale meadowbeauty, pearl crescent, pig frog, scouringrush, spicebush swallowtail

Forest In Summer

Header Image: Golden-winged Skimmer (Libellula auripennis) The sun has barely managed to get out of bed and already the cicadas are buzzing their raspy chorus in glorious surround-sound. Walking into a meadow requires slogging through a small ditch where the weeds hide six inches of water under bright green tangles. No matter. The dew is so heavy my feet were wet before I made it to the ditch. The humidity is thick… Read More

Category: Birds, Flora, Florida, Insects, Photography Tags: bar-winged skimmer, brown-headed nuthatch, eastern pondhawk, golden-winged skimmer, gray-green clubtail, northern cloudywing, palamedes swallowtail, slaty skimmer, spicebush swallowtail, wand loosestrife, wild turkey

Our Natural Places

Exploring - Naturally