verdure
new eyes
Tuesday, December 25th, 2012

As a first outing in early November with a new DSLR for Mike and some new lenses, we went to central Florida to Crooked Lake Prairie and Bok Tower Gardens. Mike continues to be the photo editor while we work on catching up on posts.

With the Canon EF-S 10-22mm:

pear

moss

I’m not quite sure if this is a scrub lizard or eastern fence lizard.

liz

Mike using the Canon 100-400mm L:

yellow

red-bellied

We saw a bald eagle on a dead tree, but it was far enough away that our pictures didn’t turn out very well.

Bok Tower is a “205-foot art deco and neo-Gothic Singing Tower housing one of the world’s finest carillons with 60 bells that ring every half hour and during daily concerts.” It can be seen for miles around. As you drive up to the grounds, which are surrounded by orange groves, the spires make it look like something out of a Tolkien book.

Again, the 10-22mm. Closer shots make the tower look like it is falling over due to the perspective.

tower

Some of the stone carving at the level of the red door (Canon 70-300mm)

carve

The tower has a moat with koi. For a few cents you can get fish food from a dispenser. The fish are well trained, and swarm the edge of the pool when someone stands nearby.

Mike, with the 100mm L:

koi

There is a display at the entrance to the gardens with what is currently bloomig. This flower was identified as Chinese Hats (Mike’s):

hats

We didn’t catch the name of these flowers. 10-22mm cropped:

puff10

Mike on the same plants (The rest are also his, using the 100mm L):

puff100

A closeup of a skipper:

skip

This red admiral seemed not quite able to fly right

admiral

A man said these berries look like currants, which his mother used to make jelly with. They are beauty berry.

anole

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frogs everywhere!
Sunday, December 16th, 2012

For the second installment of this Withlacohee River Park visit, we bring you FROGS! Frogs everywhere! In some parts of the park, particularly in the palmettos, it was sometimes difficult to find a place to look where there was not a frog, or two, or a whole hop of them.

The 60mm prime can take just lovely photos, and can work better with the dim morning light that we had than my 70-300. So we decided to start creeping up on the frogs and see how close they would let us get. It turns out, really close. A couple of times a frog hopped partially under a leaf, and let me slowly remove the leaf above it and click away.

Mike is still helping me with converting these for the blog.

holding

textured shiney

purple black

brown black spotted

reddish

light grey

frog huddled

three

sandwich

skinny

grey spotted

light grey dark grey

splotch

textured

looking up

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blending and bright
Sunday, December 16th, 2012

We’re going to be like The Hobbit and break this visit to Withlacoochee River Park in late October into two posts. First the bugs and other creatures. Mike very helpfully converted these picture to blog format.

A green mantidfly. We’ve never see one of these before.

mantid

A peninsula ribbon snake (photo taken by Mike)

slither

And the rest we haven’t identified. But isn’t this a really cool stick bug? (Maybe a long-headed toothpick grasshopper?) This is also a creature we’ve not seen before.

stick

A brilliantly furry and patient moth. [Update: we think this is an Io moth with its bright eyespot underwings hidden]

orange

These dragonflies were in dense forest and rested in deep shadows on tree trunks.

forest

iri

Like the green spider we saw at a previous park, this white spider was waiting for an appropriately sized morsel to come to the flower it sat under. We watched a zebra longwings fluttering around this plant.

ambush

dimples

wasps

green eyes look up

fuzzy

golden ratio

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more sea oats
Monday, December 10th, 2012

Pictures from Fort De Soto in mid October. Mike converted these photos to blog format.

sea oats

oats

beach sunflower

sun

There were many shorebirds, most of which I can’t tell the species of.

black legs

sandpiper

seagull

oystercatcher

oc

ruddy turnstone (Mike took this picture)

ruddy

Taking the Arrowhead Nature Trail, mosquitos again kept me from getting the camera out. Mike took this picture of a large grub. We later saw a stingray in an inlet to the mangroves.

grub

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mother nature is not your friend
Sunday, December 9th, 2012

Continuing our mega park trip in late September, the day after Juniper Springs through Ocean Pond, we went back to Alligator Lake Park.

Common mud turtle in early morning light

mud

This bird was singing from the top of a cypress, probably an Eastern Phoebe

phoebe

A mockingbird watching us watch it

mockingbird

juvenile ibis

ibisette

We saw two snakes, both probably black racers

racer

This marsh rabbit didn’t seem particularly concerned about us

hop

common buckeye

buckeye

eastern tiger swallowtail

tiger

viceroy

viceroy

Common green darners, male latched to a female. This year we’ve seen this species pretty frequently.

darners

The guidebook doesn’t say that eastern pondhawks hunt other dragonflies, but I think that is the species of the attacker. The victim looks like a blue dasher. It was kind of gruesome. We did not see the capture, but when we arrived the pondhawk was decapitating the dasher. This was right after noticing a spider with a butterfly wrapped up in its web.

cannibal

Earlier, we saw this dragonfly struggling and failing to fly.

orange mangled wings

navy

ice green

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bear swamp trail and ocean pond
Saturday, December 8th, 2012

After Juniper Springs/Fern Hammock Springs we headed a bit north, still in the Ocala National Forest, to Bear Swamp Trail in the Salt Springs Recreation Area. The park ranger at the pay station seemed surprised that we were there just for the trail. Camping, boating and swimming are the main attractions.

The trail is fairly short, a 1.3 mile loop, with a nice boardwalk on the far side. The mosquitoes were pretty bad. I had on my new permethrin jacket. I think it may help a little, but impenetrable force field against mosquitoes it is not. And although the jacket is made from a lightweight mesh material, I think it was still keeping me warmer than I otherwise would have been and I ended up getting dehydrated. So Mike took all of the pictures on this trail, using the Sony Cybershot.

red bellied woodpecker

red

bess beetle

bess

southeastern lubber grasshopper

lubber

southern pearly-eye butterfly

pearly

After recovering (with sweet tea), we headed up to Ocean Pond (lots of parks!) with the intent of watching the sunset. It ended up being too overcast for any pretty colors. There was a black couple fishing from the public dock. The man had a lovely North Florida accent, thick enough that I couldn’t understand a lot of what he said to Mike. But he called dragonflies mosquito hawks.

A blue dasher

dasher

cypress and dock

pond cypress balls (cones)

balls

floating hearts

hearts

narrow-leaved sunflower

sun

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