Merry Christmas!!!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Boomer... and me too!

Shrimp boats make for a good breakfast!

As I was driving around at the crack of dawn, I noticed a lot of bird activity on one shrimp boat in particular. It was apparent that it had shrimped the previous night and the nets still contained  some small fish and shrimp. Various birds were climbing about the boat looking for breakfast.

Immature black crowned night heron

Mature black crowned night heron,

Night heron finds a a small fish.

Night heron with a small flounder.

 

Great blue heron with a shrimp.

  Great blue spears a flounder.

Sometimes you have to take a break after all that eating.

Teenagers in the neighborhood

It's that time of the year when the yearling bears are chased away their mothers. This is part of the bear's breeding cycle. One of the results is the young bears come into town and start  attacking dumpsters, trash cans, pet foods, etc. They remind me of teenage kids...gangly, awkward, and hungry all the time. This little guy was about to hit a neighbor's trash can, when I interrupted him.

If you look closely under his right eye (click on picture to enlarge) you'll see that he has a fresh wound, probably a territorial dispute.

He finally tired of posing for me and loped back into the woods.

Have a great 4th of July!

A few shots of Apalachicola's fireworks show last night.

Coyotes on the beach

As I was leaving St. George Island I saw two mature eagles diving in an aggressive manner. I thought I might be able to get some decent pictures even though it was foggy and cloudy. When I got the window down and my camera out of the truck I saw what they were harassing.

Here's what I saw through a 400MM lens. 

 

At this range and low light level, I couldn't be certain if the was coyote or coydog. After some serious cropping and brightening, here's what the eagles were chasing.

It's a fine, obviously well fed, black coyote! I don't know if it walked across the bridge (6 miles) or swam over, but it appears to have adapted well.

October in Apalachicola

We've already had nights in the high 40-low 50 degree range. These changes trigger the movements of birds and fish, such as the increase in the number of wood storks in the last couple of weeks. I see very few during the summer, but now we are seeing them daily.

 

Our local herons and egrets are also more active, due to all the pogies and shrimp that are moving with the cooling waters.

The tarpon are also following the schools of pogies . It's not uncommon to see large schools of tarpon crashing into the migrating pogies.

The cooler weather also brings the southbound butterflies. The gulf fritillaries are coming through by the 1,000's and will soon be joined by large flights monarchs.

 If you've never visited the Panhandle in the fall, you're missing a wonderful experience. Fishing, photography or just sight seeing, now is the time.

Old Bob

Here in North Florida the loquat trees (Japanese plum) have been loaded with fruit for several weeks and it is beginning to ripen. My neighbor has a large tree that is covering the ground with ripe fruit.

Every year the grey foxes start making the rounds to all the loquats and eating the fruits that have dropped. This gives one a good cause to fix a cocktail and sit on the porch as twilight approaches. Those of you that play with cameras know that low light is less than idea for photographers. These pictures were taken at an ISO of 3200 & 6400, so they are a little noiser than I would like.

There are at least 3 foxes coming through and my favorite is "Old Bob". Now Old Bob is the last one to show up and is the most skittish of them all. (These pictures were taken at 2040 EDT.) After you see him you can understandwhy he might be cautious...

As you can see Old Bob is missing his tail, not to mention all the battle scars on his face and chest. Looking at the his grizzled muzzle it's a safe guess that he's been around awhile. He appears to be in good health and able to take care of himself. He's the "Rocky" of the neighborhood! Here are couple of the youngsters.

The great blue heron chicks are really growing. Here's picture from last week.

Eagles, owls, herons and tarpon.

I pulled into the Old Ferry Dock Landing earlier this week and looked up and saw a crow in hot pursuit of a mature eagle. Fortunately my camera was next me because they were closing very fast.

I got another shot as the eagle went into a dive to pick up speed and get the crow off his tail.

This was a successful maneuver and the eagle cut into the trees, unfortunately blocking any additional pictures.

The great horned owlets that I've been following have apparently left the nest, as I haven't seen them in the past week. Here are a few of the last pictures that I took.

 

The St. George Island great blue heron's eggs have hatched and the nest has two very active hatchlings.

Fishing has been excellent for both trout and reds, plus tarpon are beginning to show up. I've had a couple of inquiries about doing photo trips or a split photo/fishing trip and may be putting together something along those lines. Let me know if you're interested. 

Spring has sprung and things are getting busy!

All the citrus trees are loaded with fruit, as this orange shows with last year's fruit and the start of this year's crop.

Click on the picture and watch the little owl's eyes on the snake! (These pictures were shot at 8 frames per second, so this happened in about a half of a second)

I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to get one the mature great horned owls bringing a tasty snake offering to the the two nestling owls. Actually at this stage they are now "branchlings". The term used to denote that the young owls are venturing out on the surrounding tree branches, but are not flying yet(fledglings).

Here's a shot of each of them on their branches today.

Still have ospreys and herons on nests, but it's fishing time so I can't check them as regularly as I'd like. Between the trout, which have really turned on in the past 10 days, spanish mackerel which are all over the bay and the bream which are destroying fly rod poppers...it time to go to work. If you haven't booked your tarpon days get with me. It looks like they may start early!