Sandhill Crane Chick!
April 3, 2024 13 Comments
Springtime brings lots of baby birds, and one of our favorites to see is the sandhill crane family. The young peep is absolutely adorable!
Nature Photography by Pam & Richard
April 3, 2024 13 Comments
Springtime brings lots of baby birds, and one of our favorites to see is the sandhill crane family. The young peep is absolutely adorable!
April 29, 2023 10 Comments
Clearwater is a beautiful place to visit on the Gulf of Mexico near St. Petersburg, Florida. Favorites were the sugar sand beaches, plentiful dolphins, botanical gardens, and spectacular sunrises and sunsets. Can’t wait to see it again!
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 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!
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 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
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 13, 2021 12 Comments
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
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!
November 1, 2020 4 Comments
Rain showers made our yard lush and green and the flowers happy. Here is a little tour of what we see every day.
August 15, 2020 2 Comments
We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium at the end of February. It is always a delight – one of the best aquariums we’ve ever seen! It is extra special because of its beautiful location on the central California coast. Although temporarily closed now because of the pandemic, you can visit virtually through these live cams: https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/live-cams.
Some of the birds at the aquarium are quite old (https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/stories/the-aviarys-amazing-senior-citizens). Each one was found injured and unable to be released back into the wild. They have been happily living their lives in the aviary ever since. I read that birdwatching and nature is good for the soul and health – agreed! https://www.healthfitnessrevolution.com/top-10-health-benefits-of-bird-watching/
May 25, 2020 Leave a comment
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
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
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
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
We love the variety of wildlife in our backyard here in Florida. So much fun!
November 29, 2019 Leave a comment
Iceland’s Snaefellsnes Peninsula is an enchanting place. We find more places to go every time we visit. The birds – the sky – the coast – and the ever-present Snaefellsjokull volcano make for a magical place.
In the Sjominjasafn Maritime Museum we saw a display with a beautiful quote by Halldor Laxness, World Light:
“Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there anymore, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands”.
May 12, 2019 8 Comments
The diversity of plants at the University of California Santa Cruz Arboretum is amazing! There are unusual flower shapes that you could never imagine. The hummingbirds are especially abundant too – it is a photographer’s playground. It is well worth a visit. More info is at: https://www.santacruz.org/a-stroll-through-the-arboretum/
March 2, 2019 5 Comments
We enjoy going to Sebastian Inlet State Park on Florida’s central Atlantic coast. It is a spectacular place to visit! The weather this winter has been especially beautiful. We made this collage of our favorite scenes at the inlet (click on the picture to enlarge and see details). Info and live cam links are available at: https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/sebastian-inlet-state-park
May 12, 2018 10 Comments
Our purple martins are nesting now. So many birds – it is the best year ever!!! Purple martins are here in Florida from about January to July, and spend the rest of the year in Brazil. Current totals are 20 nests containing 63 babies, 50 eggs, and 42 adult birds (one pair is on the verge of laying eggs) — grand total 155! Wow! Many of the babies are in the process of hatching, and a couple of nests contain older nestlings. The tiniest babies are called pinkies, for obvious reasons. One stumper is the nest containing 10 eggs; normal is 4-6. We don’t know if it is a re-nesting attempt after the first eggs didn’t hatch, or another bird laid in there too. Love this time of year! More info is at: https://www.purplemartin.org/
March 24, 2018 15 Comments
Look who showed up at our house this week – the sandhill crane family. The baby crane is so cute!
February 4, 2018 5 Comments
Mama screech owl has been in her nest box all week – she is here to stay. Nesting season has arrived – it is spring in Florida!
December 26, 2017 21 Comments
We’ve been seeing lots of wildlife in our backyard this Christmas – deer, raccoons, sandhill cranes, turkeys, and bunnies. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season full of great surprises! Best Wishes! Pam and Richard
November 25, 2017 4 Comments
The weather is perfect here in Florida! Migrating birds have arrived, and it is a beautiful time for a walk at Sebastian Inlet State Park.
October 21, 2017 13 Comments
We are starting to get our first cool breezes of Fall here in Florida, which makes it great for walking and working in the garden. Plants love this time of year and grow like crazy! Click on pictures for more details about the flowers.
September 2, 2017 10 Comments
While we were in Jackson, Wyoming for the solar eclipse, we stopped at Grand Teton National Park and saw the Chapel of the Transfiguration (built in 1925). This historic church’s spectacular location is a popular place for weddings in summer. A special service was held there in the morning before the solar eclipse featuring a reading from Genesis (“Let there be light…..and God made two great lights – the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night and stars – and it was good”). Perfect reading for the day!
There are two beautiful stained glass windows by Jessie van Brunt inside the log cabin church featuring both winter and summer. Behind the altar is a window looking out at the Cathedral Group of the Teton Mountains. What an inspiring place to visit! More info is at: https://www.nps.gov/grte/planyourvisit/index.htm
August 12, 2017 7 Comments
Florida in summer is a land of ocean breezes, afternoon showers, and warm nights. A walk on Cocoa Beach in the morning is perfect!
July 1, 2017 15 Comments
It is amazing how much nature is visible outside my home office window. Since it is summer, we are enjoying a spectacular show of cactus flowers every night. The automatic wildlife camera captured these raccoons playing beside the flowers. During the day the female white-tailed deer was caught visiting the same spot, as well as wild turkeys, mottled ducks, and many other birds. I always have handy a flashlight, binoculars, and camera to look at and capture any surprises I might see.
June 17, 2017 3 Comments
A pair of great crested flycatchers recently moved into the woodpecker/screech owl nest box in our backyard. These birds with lemon bellies have very unique calls – usually you hear them before you see them (listen at: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Crested_Flycatcher/sounds).
If flycatchers find a snakeskin, they always weave it into their nest. We got lucky and found one, so we placed it on a tray along with fresh fruit for the birds. The flycatchers ignored the goodies, but the raccoon thought it was the best treat ever!