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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: 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
Header Image: Pine Flatwoods It can be exhilarating to be prone in the damp grass early in the morning just after sunrise observing the waking moments of what is likely the smallest damselfly in the country. Rolling to the left provides a view of the nearby tree line just as a Red-shouldered Hawk lands atop an oak tree. Rolling on my back reveals a superbly clear morning of an impossibly blue sky…. Read More
Now that I have your attention, hope you are all well today. We are. About two weeks ago, we escaped went out for a bit of fresh air and found ourselves on the edge of the Green Swamp. In a recent post, Brian at Butterflies To Dragsters described the sensation of our local swamp perfectly: “The rich, dank smell of bog, ditch, mud and water plants is nicer than the finest perfume.”… Read More
Our Natural Places 