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:

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

Mike using the Canon 100-400mm L:

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.

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

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:

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

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

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

A closeup of a skipper:

This red admiral seemed not quite able to fly right

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

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.

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.

A peninsula ribbon snake (photo taken by Mike)

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.

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

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

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.

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

sea oats

beach sunflower

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

oystercatcher

ruddy turnstone (Mike took this picture)

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.

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

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

A mockingbird watching us watch it

juvenile ibis

We saw two snakes, both probably black racers

This marsh rabbit didn’t seem particularly concerned about us

common buckeye

eastern tiger swallowtail

viceroy

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

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.

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

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

bess beetle

southeastern lubber grasshopper

southern pearly-eye butterfly

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

pond cypress balls (cones)

floating hearts

narrow-leaved sunflower