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For the past few days I’ve been out in the back yard trying to track down as many of the abundant damselflies as I can (four species so far: fragile and Rambur’s forktails, and Everglades and southern sprites). All this time in the great outdoors has been accompanied by some great natural soundtracks—the piercing call [...] [...] 
When you have the opportunity for a photo of a bird in a nice setting, you run for your camera. This Northern Cardinal was singing in the starburst and bougainvillea on our neighbor’s property, in perfect view of our glass doors in back. So I went and grabbed my camera and fired off a few [...] [...] 
This Valentine’s Day I was prowling around the back yard at lunch time as usual, camera in hand. I had the insect-shooting rig (macro lens, flash kit) because noon is normally a pretty poor time for shooting birds. But you never know… I was in the corner near the firebush when I heard the rapid [...] [...] 
Everyone’s heard of flash mobs by now—you know, those social media–inspired and -coordinated events where a group of smartphone-wielding people with too much time on their hands descend on an unsuspecting locale and do something silly/creative/fun/tragic? Well, birds have been doing mob scenes since long before our hominid ancestors descended from the trees. And photographers [...] [...] 
The Monday after Thanksgiving is a great time to get out to a nearby natural area. While most folks are back at work after a four-day weekend, those of us who have the foresight to request this day off get to experience something fairly rare around this time of year: solitude! The prospect of some [...] [...] 
A bird that’s probably familiar to many of you is Chaetura pelagica (Linnaeus, 1758), more commonly known as Chimney Swift. It’s been described by Alexander Sprunt (1954) as “resembl[ing] in appearance a cigar on wings” because of its tubular body and long, long wings. Most of the time you see it on the wing, flying overhead [...] [...] 
The traditional season designations that would make September, October, and November ”autumn” months don’t make a lot of sense in a climate like south Florida, where there are really only two seasons: wet and dry. The wet season lasts from May to October, and the dry season is November through April. When “fall” starts elsewhere [...] [...] When we first arrived in Florida ten years ago, we didn’t venture very far from our new home. Like any transplanted organism, we needed time to put down roots, learn our way around, understand our new situation. So for about a year, we didn’t go farther north than West Palm Beach or farther south than [...] [...] 
This year’s fall migration count got underway under partly cloudy skies that nearly obscured the morning’s gorgeous gibbous moon: But the morning stayed nice and cool, thanks to the clouds, which had turned to light rain in my area by the end of the morning. There weren’t too many migrants at Lake Ida Park this year; [...] [...] I’m still reading Thor Hanson’s little book, Feathers, and it inspired me to look up this amazing little video on YouTube (there might be an ad before the video starts; if so, I apologize, but I can’t control the external site). 242 miles per hour, the Peregrine Falcon can fly in a stoop. [...] |
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