Best Regards, Debby

As some of you may know, Florida has been getting pummeled for the better part of a week now by a poorly organized, slow-moving tropical system that was eventually named Debby.  We've gotten well over a foot of rain now, and while it seems to be letting up now, it's by no means over.  All that water has to go somewhere, and while much of it's been absorbed into the ground, a lot of it is standing around.  And for whatever reason, it's making a lot of birds very happy.  For the past two days, I've driven past a cow pasture near my house and there have been a couple of flocks of roseate spoonbills roaming around.  I don't see these guys very much, and sightings are very unpredictable, so when I saw a large number of them right near the road, I turned around, found a spot to park, grabbed the long lens, braved the flooded sidewalk and went shooting.  But being very shy birds, soon as the saw me they hightailed it for the far-off corner of the pasture.  But I got a couple of decent shots of them on the wing, heading away from me.  The one above is yesterday, the one below from just an hour or so ago.  The rain was nice enough to let up long enough for me to get some shots, but it's rained a bit since then.


Also of interest in the same field was a pair of tricolored herons, one a bit younger than the other, I think.  That's the mostly brown one above, and the darker one below I think is the older one.  Most of the ones I see around are darker, so I think that's the mature plumage.  It's the time of year where the babies are finally starting to turn their final adult colors, so that's why I think the one at the top is still slightly different colors, he's just a teenager.  Anyhow, both these guys had staked out a spot on the edge of the pasture where the water was flowing over the normally dry sidewalk, looking to see what hapless creatures were being swept up in the floodwaters, then eating them.  They were pretty mad at me because I was hanging out and trying to shoot them while they were working, and they eventually flew off in protest.  But I got some good pictures first.

Oh, and then there was this. I saw a disturbance out in the shallow water that I couldn't quite identify.  I finally spotted some fins and a tail, so I knew it was a fish and not a gator, but I still couldn't tell exactly what kind of fish.  They (I could tell it was three of something from the trails it was leaving on the surface) eventually got close enough to me that I could see down into the water, and it looked to be three garfish!  I would lot have expected that, but there they were, swimming around in the four or so inches of water covering this part of the pasture.  I'm pretty sure I could have grabbed them if I'd wanted to, but they have some nasty teeth in those big jaws.

Mutual Of Ernie's Wild Kingdom

Sometimes, you just get a lucky shot. I had waded into the water a short ways yesterday at Robinson Preserve to get a picture of an osprey. As I was shooting him, I heard some people in kayaks behind me describing some fins in the water, wondering if they were sharks or dolphins. Since I was in the water already, I hoped they were dolphins, and that turned out to be the case. The osprey flew away and I turned my attention to where these fins were, and suddenly the water just offshore seemed to explode with activity. I pointed my camera in the right direction and saw a couple of dolphin fins sticking up from the shallow water. I started tracking them and shooting, and this is what I got. Two dolphins were playing with some fish, sheepshead to be exact. As you can see in this shot, he's tossed the fish completely out of the water. Those two pelicans saw what was going on and were high-tailing it to the spot to try and get some free lunch out of the deal. I kept shooting the dolphins for as long as I could, but this was the only time I caught them with a fish out of the water. It was a pretty impressive sight.  I'd post more pictures, but Picasa still isn't working with Blogger.  Must be a problem on my end.

The Fishin's Good

If you'd asked me, I would have said that there are no fish in the Tidal Basin. It's a big round expanse of brackish water surrounded by monuments and roads in DC, with only a couple of small inlets and outlets. But as I was walking around it during my recent trip, this guy was pulling fish out of there. And they weren't tiny, nasty looking fish, they were nice sized ones. He said that he always had good luck when he fished down there, and he had a bucketful that backed him up. So I guess you can't judge a body of water by it's surroundings.

Fishy Fish

I spotted this fish in the South Creek at Oscar Scherer State Park Sunday. I've no idea what he was doing, but he kept swimming around in large circles, right at the surface of the water. Maybe he was looking for something. I watched for a good ten minutes, but I never saw him eat anything or push anything around. I think maybe he got caught one too many times and one of the fish hooks poked him in the brain.

Like A Fish Out Of Water

I think I mentioned that I went to the beach for sunset tonight. Little did I know I was going to get a picture of something I'd never shot before. Seconds after the sun actually set, I noticed that there were dolphins cavorting offshore. The shot above was actually something I shot right before I noticed them, so I wasn't intending to photograph the dolphin, he just snuck into the shot. But that's not the unique shot

Apparently, the dolphins were hunting, and they herded a whole school of fish in towards shore. Well, the birds got wind of what was going on, and they started joining in the fun. Suddenly, the water seemed to boiling with fish and birds. I just started shooting like a madman, and I actually got a fish up out of the water. Look at the lower left in the shot above. He's up, out of the water, and gasping for, um, water. But there he is! This is already a crop of a larger shot, so I didn't want to zoom in too much closer, but you can see him quite clearly. I had plenty of shots of disturbed water, but this appears to be the only one you can see the actual fish in. Pretty cool, eh?

And this was just another pelican shot I found that I liked. It's easy to get them in the air, but hard to get their wings in an attractive and recognizable position.

Fresh Florida Seafood

Did I mention how good it is to be back in Florida after spending four days in cold, snowy Ohio? They just don't get the fresh seafood like we do here.