Nature Photography by Pam & Richard
April 15, 2023 7 Comments
Spring nesting season is in full swing here in Florida. The great egret feather displays are exquisitely beautiful! In perfect timing, our Egret / Fringed Star Orchid (Epidendrum ciliare) is blooming now too! This lovely orchid is very fragrant at night.
January 1, 2023 10 Comments
Best wishes for the New Year – hope it brings magical moments in time! Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said:
“Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, and drink the wild air!”
Get out and enjoy nature – it’s good for your health!
December 23, 2022 15 Comments
Warm wishes to you for the holidays from our Florida “Snowman”!
Florida “Snowman” at Sebastian Beach on Central Atlantic Coast
December 11, 2022 14 Comments
The weather lately is perfect and we’re enjoying our home on the central east coast of Florida. Lots of flowers are blooming, rainbows and rocket launches are a treat, and it’s a lovely time for a walk at the beach!
February 26, 2022 8 Comments
In late November we rescued this Tersa sphinx moth caterpillar from the top of our trash can. How it got there I’ll never know. We placed it in a safe big aquarium with lots of leaves and sticks. It turned into a pupa shortly thereafter and emerged last week. We released it into the garden and it flew away at dusk. This moth (Xylophanes tersa) is a kind of hawk or hummingbird moth that drinks nectar at night. What a beauty!
January 30, 2022 5 Comments
Here is a look around our Florida Yard in January. The sandhill cranes are getting ready for nesting season. Mama raccoon always stops by for snacks leftover for the birds. Our orchids are blooming – they never stop year round. And the new koi pond on our back porch is a joy – so much fun!
Sandhill Crane in Yard
Raccoon Eating a Snack
Indoor Display of Blooming Orchids
Purple and Yellow Cattleya in Bloom
New Koi Pond on Back Porch at Night
October 30, 2021 12 Comments
Here in Florida the beach looks different every day. My favorite of all is when the water turns this stunning aqua blue. Makes for a great beach walk on our Space Coast!
Space Coast Beaches – Surf Fishing
Space Coast Beaches Shoreline
Space Coast Beaches – Waves Coming In
September 15, 2021 6 Comments
What a spectacular launch tonight! SpaceX launched their first all-civilian crew into space at 8:02 pm Eastern Daylight Time this evening. The Inspiration4 mission is part of a fundraising effort to raise over $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (they provide care to children at no cost to families). Everything about this mission is great. If that wasn’t enough – it was a perfect evening here in Florida and the view was AMAZING!!!
August 28, 2021 2 Comments
Sebastian Inlet State Park, Florida, is a favorite of ours year round. In summer we especially enjoy walking out on the pier. It’s a great way to see the wildlife and enjoy the breeze. Great birds we’ve seen include royal terns, osprey carrying a black sea bass, and a rare black tern.
June 6, 2021 6 Comments
We’ve had a great year for purple martins! Nesting season is now coming to an end, with only a couple of nests remaining with babies. Here in Florida the season starts in January and ends in June. The total colony count this year was 176 birds including 28 nests (56 adults) containing 120 babies. Very soon the flock will leave, gather with others into roosts, and then migrate back to South America for the rest of the year.
Purple martins are so nice and cheery to have around. We miss them when they are gone!
This 4 1/2 minute video includes camera footage taken from inside one of the nesting gourds. We had never realized that purple martins collect green pepper tree leaves for the nest to act as a natural insect repellent. I have no idea how such tiny babies eat such big dragonflies!
April 23, 2021 8 Comments
SpaceX launched four astronauts of the Crew-2 mission into space at 5:49 am this morning (April 23, 2021). It was a spectacular sight here on the Space Coast of Florida – a magical moment of wonder! As I watched the rocket arc into the sky, I could hear the predawn birds calling and an alligator bellowing. A short time later the roar of the engines reached me at our backyard in Palm Bay. The crew will dock at the International Space Station on early Saturday morning for a six month stay. Learn more at: https://www.spacex.com/launches/
April 19, 2021 8 Comments
Goodwin Marsh near our home in Palm Bay, Florida, is a wonderful place to see birds in spring. So much beauty to see!
March 2, 2021 9 Comments
Cute and Fuzzy Baby Crane Chick Walking
Sandhill Crane and Baby Chick by Sabal Palm Tree
Sandhill Crane Feeding Baby Chick a Kernal of Dried Corn
Sandhill Crane and Baby Chick Walking Together
Sandhill Crane Family in Yard
Sandhill Crane Face Portrait
One of the joys in Florida is having sandhill cranes living in your neighborhood. We were thrilled this week when “our” sandhill crane pair brought their new fuzzy baby chick to our yard for a visit. So cute!
February 14, 2021 4 Comments
Valentine Seashell Heart formed by Atlantic Giant Cockle Shells, Sebastian Beach, Florida
Warm wishes for a Happy Valentine’s Day from Florida!
February 13, 2021 12 Comments
Two Male Painted Buntings
Male and Female Painted Buntings
Male Cardinal and Male Painted Bunting
Male Cardinal
Female Cardinal
Female Cardinal and Mourning Dove
Mourning Dove
Goldfinch (winter colors)
Catbird
Purple Martin Pair Inside Nesting Gourd (visitor peeking in on left)
For Christmas Richard got me a BLINK automatic outdoor security camera. Instead of using it for security, we use it to take wireless videos of the birds that visit our feeder. We also put one inside our purple martin nesting gourd. I extracted screenshots from the videos to post here. Love the variety and color of birds right outside our door here in Florida!
February 6, 2021 6 Comments
One of Several Ponds at Sanctuary
Moorhen (Common Gallinule) on Pond
Trail Lined with Scrub Oaks
Christmas Lichen (Cryptothecia rubrocincta) on Scrub Oak
Powder Puff Lichen (Cladina evansii)
Author Pam Photographing Sandy Goldenaster-Lined Trail
Coastalplain Goldenaster (Chrysopsis scabrella)
Fetterbush (Lyonia lucida) Pink Bell Flower
Rusty Staggerbush (Lyonia ferruginea)
Florida Paintbrush (Carphephorus corymbosus) (member of sunflower family)
Rare Rosemary Scrub (look closely and you will see a crab spider in middle)
Sandhill Crane
Florida Scrub Jay (vulnerable species)
Gopher Tortoise at Underground Burrow (vulnerable species)
Malabar Scrub Sanctuary is a protected rare scrub habitat in Brevard County, Florida. It is part of the Space Coast’s Environmentally Endangered Lands program. Visitors come to see rare plants and animals in a beautiful setting. It’s a great place to hike!
January 31, 2021 Leave a comment
Pam with Pachypodium
Richard with 16 Foot Tall Agave Spike
Richard with 6 Foot Tall Orchid Flower Spike (Laelia moyobambae)
Orchid’s Flower Head (Laelia moyobambae)
Close-up of Orchid’s Flower Head (Laelia moyobambae)
Previous Year’s Orchid Flower Spike that was 5 Feet Tall (Laelia moyobambae)
We like to grow BIG plants at our home here in Florida. Eight years ago this Pachypodium was only 6 inches tall when we planted it. Now it towers above me! Our agave recently shot up a HUGE flower spike that is over 16 feet tall! Bees love the flowers. Our rare orchid (Laelia moyobambae) has grown a flower spike for over 5 months now, which has peaked at 6 feet tall! It is tied to a frame for stability and raised a bit off the ground for root aeration. The flower head at the top has individual flowers a pretty bronze and purple color. Not much is known about this variety of orchid other than it comes from Peru (http://tropicalplantbook.com/garden_plants/orchids/Laelia/laelia_moyobambae.htm). WOW – we love plants!
January 17, 2021 8 Comments
LEGO Polar Bear and Cubs
LEGO Monarch Butterfly on Milkweed
LEGO Jeweled Chameleon
LEGO Baby Sea Turtle Hatching
LEGO Snow Leopard
LEGO Coral Reef
LEGO Coral Reef – Close-up of Seahorse
LEGO Whooping Crane on Nest of Eggs
LEGO Zebra
LEGO Hummingbird Feeding from Trumpet Flower
Bushes as Elves in Garden
Holiday Angel Display
Maroon and Yellow Cattleya Orchid in Bloom
Purple Waterlily Blooming in December
We especially enjoyed the LEGO art on display at McKee Gardens over the holidays. It was great to see such creative sculptures by talented artist Sean Kenney in “Nature Connects: Art with LEGO Bricks”.
Click on any of the pictures to enlarge and see details about how many LEGO bricks are in the sculpture and how many hours it took to create it. For example, the Polar Bear with Cubs sculpture is the most complex – it is composed of 133,263 LEGO bricks and took 1,048.5 hours to build.
See Sean Kenney’s tour schedule by Imagine Exhibitions at: https://www.seankenney.com/portfolio/nature_connects/ See more of his work at: https://www.seankenney.com/exhibits/
January 12, 2021 5 Comments
Lying on the Ground Looking Up at Bok Tower
Bok’s December Entrance with Holiday Flowers (red impatiens and poinsettias, and white Snow Flake Bush (Euphorbia leucocephala)
Flowers in Bloom Display (Make of it the most beautiful spot on earth where the bird and human can rest and find themselves)
Origami Decorated Christmas Trees in Lobby
Christmas Presents with Origami Bows
Creamy White and Red Poinsettias with Raindrops
Alligator Statue with Christmas Holiday Bow
Tiled Bench in Front of Historic Pinewood Estate
Tree Covered with Resurrection Ferns
Round Outdoor Pot Covered with Colorful Lichens
Balloon Plant Milkweed (Asclepias physocarpa) Host Plant for Monarchs
Monarch Caterpillar Eating Balloon Plant Milkweed Leaves
Apricot Sun Bromeliad (Aechmea blanchetiana Orange) by Saw Palmetto Frond
Stunning Purple Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)
Gorgeous Dark Pink Camellia with Yellow Center
We visited Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida, in December 2020. Lucky for us it is only a day trip from home and it was easy to walk around in isolation. It felt oh-so-good to visit such a beautiful place during the Christmas holidays. https://boktowergardens.org/
November 15, 2020 5 Comments
SpaceX Astronauts Launched to ISS
A full SpaceX crew launched tonight at 7:27 pm EDT here in Florida. Four astronauts are on their way to the International Space Station! WOW – what a spectacular view and achievement!!! Such a beautiful warm evening – the rocket lit up the whole sky. This was the view from our backyard pond in Palm Bay, Florida. Watch full coverage of the Crew-1 mission on NASA TV at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X5lGlDOfg&feature=emb_logo OR on SpaceX at https://www.spacex.com/
November 1, 2020 4 Comments
Bees Made Honeycombs
Sandhill Crane (4 feet tall)
Cottontail Rabbit
Mushroom Fairy Ring
Ladies Tresses (native orchid growing in lawn)
Blooming Agave Spike at Sunset
Pink Hidden Ginger
Sunshine Mimosa Flower
Purple Passion Flower
Front View of Plumeria Flowers
Back Candy-Stripe View of Plumeria Flowers
Rain showers made our yard lush and green and the flowers happy. Here is a little tour of what we see every day.
June 14, 2020 18 Comments
Spectacular Sky Show of SpaceX Launch (star sapphire effect!)
SpaceX Booster Return Rocket Trail
On Saturday morning in the predawn hour of 5:21 am SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here on Florida’s east coast. The sight was spectacular – WOW!!! The rocket trail was illuminated by sunlight from below the horizon. The glow in the bottom picture is from the booster return landing on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You” offshore, which at that point was 350 miles away! Fifty-eight Starlink satellites and 3 Planet SkySats were sent into orbit. Read about it at: https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-8-planet-satellite-launch-rocket-landing-success.html and https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-8-launch-amazing-twitter-photos.html
June 6, 2020 4 Comments
Close-up of Cactus Flower
Three Cactus Flowers
Cactus Flowers on Sabal Palm
Daytime Before Blooms Open at Night
It’s that time of year here in Florida – our Queen-of-the-Night cactus is blooming every evening! This unassuming snake vine cactus (Selenicereus pteranthus), which is unremarkable for most of the year, steals the show in early summer. It is easily propagated because there are rootlets all along the plant. Each bloom opens and lasts only one night. The flowers are the size of dinner plates – wow!
May 25, 2020 Leave a comment
Great Crested Flycatcher on Nest Box
Great Crested Flycatcher with Dragonfly for Babies
Inside the Nest Box (Babies Hunkered Down)
Flycatcher Baby Fledgling After Leaving Nest
We are so excited to have a pair of great crested flycatchers nesting in our yard! For identification, look for the bird’s pretty lemon-yellow belly. The picture inside the nest box was taken with our tiny Insta360 ONE camera. We could see 3 babies in the nest at the bottom (middle). Surrounding the babies are the flycatcher’s unique nesting materials – lots of feathers and even a bit of black and white fur (upper right). Flycatchers are well known for weaving snakeskins into their nest, and this one has one too – how exciting! The nest also has two round white empty mud dauber pots (top). I wish we had gotten a picture of the eggs – they are creamy brown with purple squiggles on them. Maybe next year! A previous post about flycatchers is at: https://naturetime.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/great-crested-flycatchers-are-nesting/
May 11, 2020 16 Comments
Great Blue Heron Pair on Nest
Great Blue Heron Nest Building on Tree Tops
Male Anhinga’s Beautiful Green and Blue Eye Colors in Spring
Fuzzy Anhinga Babies in Nest
Double Crested Cormorants Have Turquoise Blue Mouths During Breeding Season
Beautiful Iridescent Colors of Glossy Ibis
Green Backed Heron in Marsh
Yellow Crowned Night Heron in Tree with Spanish Moss
Juvenile White Phase of Little Blue Heron
Little Blue Heron Transition from White Phase to Adulthood Plumage
Adult Little Blue Heron’s Dark Feather Colors
Tricolored Heron’s Crest Feathers
Adult Tricolored Heron’s Beautiful Blue Color During Breeding Season
Juvenile Tricolored Heron’s Funny Face
Tricolored Heron Baby Hello!
Paired with my other post about Florida’s egrets and other white birds in spring, this post is about herons and dark feathered birds during nesting season. These colorful birds and their babies make me smile!
May 2, 2020 21 Comments
Snowy Egret Breeding Feather Plumes
Snowy Egret Funny Face
Snowy Egret Plumed Head Feathers
Snowy Egret Golden Slipper Feet
Snowy Egret Face Breeding Colors
Snowy Egret Babies
Cattle Egret Breeding Colors
Cattle Egret Face
Great Egret Face Breeding Colors
Great Egret Feather Plumes
Great Egret with Outstretched Wing
Great Egret Babies
Great Egret Baby Hello
White Ibis Face Breeding Colors
Wood Stork on Nest
Wood Stork Family (3 babies)
We love our Florida birds, especially in spring. This post shows egrets and other white birds during nesting season, when feathers are plumed and colors are bright. If you are lucky, you will see great egrets, snowy egrets, and cattle egrets together in one big breeding colony – it is quite a sight! Sometimes wood storks and white ibis nest there too!
April 28, 2020 8 Comments
Purple Martin Nesting Gourds
Martins Collecting Pine Needles for Nest
Bird’s Eye View from Inside Gourd
Five Eggs in Nest
Newly Hatched Babies (Pinkies)
Growing Purple Martin Babies
Older Babies with Pinfeathers
Parents Bring Bugs to Growing Babies
Babies Waiting to be Fed
Hungry Baby with Mouth Wide Open
Rainbow Over Purple Martin Gourds
We have so many purple martin babies! Did a backyard count here in Florida and the grand total for our nesting colony is 201 purple martins (107 babies, 22 eggs, and 72 adults). Ages range from eggs to newborn pinkies to older babies with pinfeathers. Love this time of year! Learn more from the Purple Martin Conservation Association at: https://www.purplemartin.org/
UPDATE May 16, 2020: Lots of babies fledging this week! Constant activity at the nesting gourds – great time of year!
April 6, 2020 18 Comments
Male Painted Bunting and Cardinal
Female Painted Bunting
Male Wild Turkey with Beard Feathers
Sandhill Crane
Peahen (female peacock)
Whitetail Deer
Armadillo
Raccoon Babies at Door
We love the variety of wildlife in our backyard here in Florida. So much fun!
February 16, 2020 7 Comments
Group of Orchid Flowers
Purple-Speckled Phalaenopsis Orchid
White and Yellow with Purple Spots Phalaenopsis Orchid
White, Pink, and Yellow Dendrobium Orchid
Unique Purple and White Dendrobium Orchid
Purchased Vanilla Bean
Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
Bowl of Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
Did you know that vanilla flavor comes from an orchid? Each bean pod of Vanilla planifolia contains thousands of tiny black seeds – these are the black specs in vanilla bean ice cream! Pure vanilla extract in your spice cabinet comes from vanilla beans mixed with water and alcohol. In nature, Vanilla planifolia flowers can only be pollinated by hummingbirds and special bees. For commercial production, the orchids must be pollinated by hand. Orchids get more interesting all the time! Now who is hungry? Read more at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vanilla-comes-from_n_5021060
December 24, 2019 14 Comments
Warm wishes from the beach here in Florida for a wonderful holiday and happy new year!
Driftwood Tree at Sebastian Beach
naturetime 