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(Click to enlarge images, click again to zoom.) Sunrise. It happens every day. Many of us are still in bed or busy rushing to jobs or getting the kids ready for school and don’t notice our sun coming up right on schedule. Then – there are other days. Our trip to the forest had already been an adventure. Some of those rushing to that job were so excited about getting there the… Read More
(Finally. This is the last chapter of reporting on our only day this summer we were able to explore nature. It was August 15 and we were in the Lake Wales Ridge State Forest in central Florida.) (Click on images to enlarge, click again to zoom.) It would have been easy to talk ourselves out of this trip. Both recovering from surgeries, horrible curve balls from Life, middle of Florida’s hot and… Read More
Category: Birds, Flora, Florida, Insects, Photography Tags: barred yellow, black dancer, carolina yellow-eyed grass, cloudless sulphur, common buckeye, eastern amberwing, florida pricklypear, florida scrub jay, lake wales ridge state forest, loblolly bay, narrowleaf primrose-willow, october flower, roserush, sandhill st. john's-wort, scrubland goldenaster, southern needleleaf
(Click on images to enlarge, click again to zoom.) Dew-bejeweled wisps of webs atop brown grass stalks sparkled with the first rays of sun as we made our way along the red clay road through the forest. The call of a Northern Cardinal was as clear as the bright blue sky overhead. Mid-summer. Hot. Humid. Surely a day meant for mad dogs. Indeed. Flowers appeared in profusion every few yards. Birds and… Read More
(Click on images to enlarge, click again to zoom.) Our timing was good. Driving through the fringe of the city limits in the dark of pre-dawn is sometimes a harrowing experience. Drivers tail-gating, anxious to pass at the first opportunity, or in many cases, making their own (dangerous) opportunity. They either love their jobs so much they just can’t wait to get there, or they overslept again. We suspect the latter. On… Read More
Category: Birds, Fauna, Flora, Florida, Insects, Photography Tags: arbuckle tract, bachman's sparrow, blackroot, eastern cottontail, elliot's milkpea, grass-leaved ladies' tresses, grassleaf lettuce, lake wales ridge state forest, palamedes swallowtail, pinebarren aster, pricklypear, red saddlebags, roserush, white-eyed vireo, whitemouth dayflower
(Gini and I have just returned from a week-long road trip to southwest Florida. We wanted a change of venue to celebrate our 56th wedding anniversary. Instead of exploring the familiar swamps near home, where else would a couple of native Floridian nature lovers go for such a momentous celebration than — bigger swamps? More to come. In the meantime, this post will be a description of our visit to a favorite… Read More
Category: Birds, Flora, Florida, Insects, Photography Tags: black-and-white warbler, blue-gray gnatcatcher, coastal plain honeycombhead, deer fly, florida toadflax, lake wales ridge state forest, lupine, netted pawpaw, northern parula, pileated woodpecker, pine warbler, pinebarren frostweed, rabbitbells, sawtooth blackberry, shiny blueberry, shortleaved rosemary, sweetscent
Our Natural Places 