On a cool morning in early November we drove out to Fort De Soto. The chilly breeze kept most people off the beach, except for the family taking photos with an empty picture frame prop (it was harsh lighting, and pretty windy, but perhaps they didn’t have another chance, and it’s not like the conditions were stopping me either). We caught sight of several dolphins hunting offshore.

Sea oats

Several of these birds, I think sanderlings, were running about at the edge of the waves. Sanderlings migrate long distances, breeding in the High Arctic and “wintering south to South America, South Europe, Africa, and Australia.” They “feed on invertebrate prey buried in the sand in the upper intertidal…. When the tide is out these crustaceans live in burrows some way beneath the surface. When the tide comes in, they move into the upper layers of sand so as to be able to feed on the plankton and detritus that washes over them with each wave. They then burrow rapidly down again as the water retreats. They leave no marks on the surface so the sanderlings hunt for them by plunging their beaks into the sand at random, consuming whatever they find.” [wiki]

Retreating inland a bit to escape the wind, we took a trail through the mangroves that unfortunately had plenty of mosquitoes that kept us from taking many pictures pictures. A hawk, although I find them hard to identify any further, watched us for a while from the trunk of a dead palm before flying off.

Off a side trail to a tiny beach, we found a reddish egret wading in the shallows.

And several pelicans flew by.

This time at Withlacoochee River Park there was drumming instead of flutes. Signs and the only group that we passed on the Florida Trail indicated that there was a powwow being held at the park that weekend (in late October). It has been a rainy autumn, and while the river was lower than our last visit, the lowest platforms on the canoe dock were still submerged. The mosquitoes were also discouragingly active and kept impeding the whole picture taking process.

Golden silk spider

Carolina Satyr through palmetto

Perhaps this is a squirrel tree frog, although they look very similar to green tree frogs, also on palmetto

I was nearly on top of this cottonmouth, my first poisonous snake sighting outside of the safety of a vehicle, before noticing it. It was still cool, and while it was aware of us, and obviously unafraid, it made no moves either. I stayed rather farther away still. Mike took this picture.

These yellow buttons were up a little hill near some tortoise burrows.

Narrow-leaved sunflowers

Long-tailed skipper. We haven’t been able to identify the flower, which was growing along a roadside next to a field.

In early October, on one of the first chilly mornings that warmed into a fantastic weekend, we returned to Alligator Lake Park. It was also our first adventure with my new lens hood. Useful accessory.

Neither of the photos in my bird books show the prominent yellow eye ring, but we believe this is a yellow-billed cuckoo. It was a very curious bird, like the mockingbirds, which means it was actually facing me instead of the usual bird butt poses I end up with in my pictures.

The coots were not present in huge numbers as we’ve seen on previous visits, but there were several pied-billed grebes.

Viceroys (below) and gulf fritillaries were the most prevalent butterflies that we saw.

Many pollinators were interested in these flowers. I believe they are beggar-ticks.

A checkered skipper.

There were many pondhawks warming up or flying about. This larger dragonfly, which hovered for a few moments over the path, seemed to be hunting some of them.

Mike took this picture of the same species, common green darner.

When we got back to the car, we found two mockingbirds fighting. There was a little blood, but both flew away just fine after their dispute was resolved.

In the latter part of September, right after a rain, we visited Weedon Island Preserve. Near the first trail entrance, we saw two osprey in a dead tree.

While I was taking pictures of the osprey, Mike noticed a little frog hidden in the weeds beside the road. I believe this was the first frog we’d seen at this park. Mike took a picture so we could try to identify it later. We started down the trail and almost immediately found another much larger frog. Mike took this picture as well, in between the fairly dense underbrush.

It turns out that this day, Weedon was overrun by these leopard frogs. Most of them we only noticed as they made huge leaps into the water beside the path. And we must have only noticed a fraction of the true number of frogs surrounding us.

We saw two of these immature yellow crowned night herons.

Bill, the brave mangrove tree crab, pausing on the boardwalk. Usually, these dart out of sight while we are quite far away, and even when you do see them, they usually are in very low light areas.

A green anole with blue dusted skin.

On our latest trip to Sawgrass, in mid September, we saw lots of juvenile alligators.

Underneath one of the bridges across the canal, an oak leaf drifted past this tiny alligator

And at the shore another alligator was basking. You can see its foot prints in the mud.

On a previous visit, we’d seen a large adult (the mother?) alligator where this little baby was.

At the overlook where this picture was taken, there were a bunch of sunfish, tilapia and turtles. Here, a small softshell turtle was trying to climb up on top of the larger red-eared slider

We think this is a horace’s dusky wing

An old viceroy

We returned to Brooker Creek over Labor Day weekend. The park was open this time, but we didn’t last long. The mosquitoes were still hovering even after applying anti-bug juice, and after the boardwalk ended, we didn’t make it far before we reached impassible water submerging the path.

A cardinal flower next to the boardwalk.

On our way out, a baby gopher tortoise was very slowly crossing the road. We stopped and stood over it, waiting for it to come out of hiding and continue on its way, as it would have easily been run over. Another park visitor stopped and took pictures with us.