There were lots of critters around the two story observation deck at the edge of Sawgrass Lake in mid May. Pretty much all of them were best captured with the 100-400mm, so these are all Mike’s pictures, and he did the conversion as well.

bullfrog

marsh rabbit

green heron with young alligator behind

one of a pair of Black-Necked Stilts

I’d think this tactic of flying right above the water with its lower mandible scooping through the water at Sawgrass would yield more water plants than anything else, but we watched this Black Skimmer successfully catch a good sized fish by tracing through the more open tracks in the lake.

The road to the parking area for Alderman’s Ford Preserve is paved, though nearly one lane wide for the last stretch past the 4 way stop sign. The parking area is grass, with some morning shade available. There is lots of shade when the trail is near the river, but to get there one has to pass through large open fields. This park would be too parching to visit in summer. Our visit was on a breezy later morning in early May, before the mosquitoes had gotten to replenish their numbers. The open fields had beggar-tick, passion flowers and what we think is sea radish, an invasive, and tons of butterflies, including several rare or new to us. Mike did the photo conversions.

checked white male above (Mike’s), female below. I think their spots, especially on the male, looks like lipstick marks

great southern white, on sea radish or something similar

variegated fritillary

queen (Mike’s)

white or common checkered skipper (Mike’s)

rattlebox moths like to land on the underside of grasses. We chased this one around trying to get a decent picture.

The “NO SWIMMING” signs at the parking area insinuate better access, but the Alafia river has carved a fairly deep channel (for Florida) and the only access to it from the western part of the trail system is down a very steep bank. The river has a few small rapids, which is unusual for Florida. A ranger with an ATV was putting out a campfire on the trail when we reached the river. There is no camping allowed in the park. It looked like there was quite a party going on with all of the beer cans strewn around.

Continuing past the impromptu campsite there was some prickly pear blooming (this and following two Mike’s)

and also an eastern fence lizard

a skipper, maybe a clouded skipper

At the western most end of the trail is the remains of the brick foundation for a railway trestle bridge, being taken back by the forest.

We wanted to take advantage of highs only in the mid seventies on a weekend in mid April (forever ago!), so we headed up to Withlacoochee River Park. When we were nearly at the park, which is down 5 miles of a country road, a fire truck was blocking the road. There were no accidents, but we later passed a utility truck, so maybe a power line had come down. We were driving the GTO, and there is no alternate route that we know of that is paved, so we drove back to Dade City and looked for alternate parks, but decided just to try Withlachoochee River Park again, and by then the fire truck had left.

There was a chance of rain, but we only got a few small drops while we were at the park. It remained overcast all day, which left us at the edge of enough light to take photos much of the time, but we never had the harsh contrast from bright sunshine to shadow either. The ressurection ferns were fully unfurled, covering the oak branches.

There were a substantial number of frogs, but we’ve posted those before, so instead here are some interesting fungi and lichen.

A buzzing on the forest floor brought our attention to a fight between a cicada and a wasp. After a minute or two, the wasp flew away, leaving the cicada twitching on the ground. There is a cicada killer wasp, but that wasp doesn’t seem to have the painted stripes on its thorax that ours did, and it’s a digger that hauls the cicada to its burrow.

Crickets, like cicadas, are much more often heard than seen.

This looks like an eastern pondhawk to me, which are not described as dragonfly hunters, but perhaps the victim presented itself as too easy a catch

A ball of baby spiders

Pipewort!

We don’t know what kinds of moths these are.

Mike did the conversions. I took the pipewort, papery fungi and cricket picture. The rest are his.

Way back in early April we went to Alligator Lake. My pictures are the birds and the second snake and the others are Mike’s.

It was dewey in the morning and the rain lilies were out.

The water has remained higher than our visits in previous years. Joining back to the main loop trail around the lake, two large alligators were sunning on the trail. Luckily they went back to the water. Then we found two snakes. This patient one I think is a mud snake.

this song sparrow (?), had no trouble hopping along on top of the water plants

we peeked at this hunting bittern for several minutes trying to get a clear shot

lantana

female red-winged blackbird, who looks very different than the nearly all black male

palm warbler

white pelican, with a cormorant behind

metallic leopard frog

southern water snake

We’ve had a green iguana kicking it in one of the trees outside the master bedroom windows for a few days this week. This is about their northern limit. We’ve only seen one other iguana, which really was green, two or three years ago.

In early April, Inglis had ticks, but was still fairly brown (by Florida’s standards), and fewer butterflies were out.

American lady

White m hairstreak. This and the following three are Mike’s. (And he did the photo conversion on this post.)

Blue-eyed grass

A robber fly.

We saw several red-winged blackbirds.

The light was fading and I never got a really sharp image of this tufted titmouse.