Bahia Beach Nature Preserve
This past Monday, my friend Art Nadelman and I made a visit to Bahia Beach Nature Preserve in Ruskin. The preserve is less than a mile from Tampa Bay and has become one of favorite winter spots for waterfowl. We often see many other species of water birds like herons, egrets, gulls and shorebirds. Occasionally […]
Reddish Egret at Fort De Soto
For the past 9 days, our daughter and granddaughter have been visiting us from Japan. Of course, anyone who comes here wants to go to the beach so last week we took a trip to Fort De Soto Park in St. Petersburg. They have a huge beach that is good for shelling. While the ladies […]
Little Winter Wonders
One of my favorite birds is the green-winged teal. They are beautiful small ducks that migrate here every winter. While green-winged teal are a common species, they can be difficult to find because they prefer smaller shallow ponds with plenty of cover. Last year we were dealing with the high water left over from hurricane […]
Bahia Beach Preserve
One of our favorite spots for bird photography is a little place in Hillsborough County, FL called Bahia Beach Preserve. It sits on the east side of Tampa Bay only ¾ of a mile from the bay and just ¼ of a mile from the Little Manatee River. Because of its proximity to the bay, […]
North Port
While we get ready for the start of the fall migration, we like to find some new spots to check out. Recently, at the suggestion of one of our birding friends, we took a trip to Deer Prairie Creek Preserve South in North Port, FL. The park sits along the shores of the Myakka River […]
Mergansers
The past few years we have been fortunate to find several groups of hooded mergansers that picked this area as their winter home. They are small diving ducks that like to feed on little fish, snails, and water insects. When they find a good food source and get into a feeding frenzy, they will dive […]
Vermilion Flycatcher
Earlier this spring, my wife Pam and I got our cameras out and took a ride over by Orlando to find a rare bird that had been reported in the area. The bird is a Vermilion Flycatcher, and the males are beautiful. They are normally found in South America, Central America, Mexico, and the very […]
Snail Kites
This past week my friend and fellow photographer Art Nadelman and I ventured down to the Fort Myers area in search of snail kites. I’ve written about snail kites on a couple of occasions in the past. Most recently we had a great day photographing kites near Gainesville. But this week was the best yet […]
The Notorious Deep Hole
Florida is known for alligators. Many people think of the Everglades as the foremost destination for seeing alligators. But if you live in or are visiting the southwest part of the state, there is no need to travel any further than Sarasota County to see lots of large gators. One amazing place is in a […]
Lake Morton Waterfowl
Lakeland, FL is aptly named with over 30 lakes within the city limits. The best lake for photography always seems to be Lake Morton. It’s famous for its population of swans. But the main reason we like Lake Morton is for the wood ducks and several migrating ducks that visit every year. It’s a nice […]
Wintering Waterfowl
It started off being a rather quiet year for waterfowl. No matter where we went in December and early January, the numbers seemed down from years past. But the last couple of weeks have changed everything. Not only have the number of ducks improved, but we found a couple of species that we hadn’t seen […]
Reddish Egret
One bird that has become a favorite of photographers is a reddish egret. They are acrobatic feeders. There is one that people search for at Fort DeSoto Park in St. Petersburg. If you find a group of people in the tidal flats, you can generally figure that a reddish egret is the focus of their […]
