Florida Preview

Hi all! I am sitting on a hotel bed somewhere in northeast Tennessee, pooped after 13 hours on the road. I'll be happy to get home tomorrow afternoon, and hoping that slippery roads don't hold me up.

I took around 2,000 images while in Florida, which really is an absurd number. I have already gone through some of them, deleted the bad ones (the vast majority) and saved them to a flash drive--I like to have things backed up.

My mother and I spent some time at the beach, the Brevard Zoo and the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. I also watched an osprey eat a fish almost directly over my head just down the street from my Grandmother's house. I added...at least three new birds to my life list, and got some better shots of others I'd seen before. I'm really excited to share these with you.

As a preview to my trip, here is an image of the first new bird I saw at MINWR--a Reddish egret. I had looked at Sibley's at some point prior to my trip and seen this bird in the book, and thought well, that would be a neat one to see. I need to start hoping for, oh, a million bucks.

Reddish egret chasing its prey.

Anyway, this was one of the goofiest birds I have ever seen. It runs and jumps and twirls as it's fishing, throwing up its wings and changing direction in a blink of the eye, a gangly bird with ADD. I laughed out loud several times watching it.

It will take me a day or two to sort through my files, then will start sharing them with you.