Thursday

I looked up the spider in yesterday’s picture. It’s a female Spineybacked Orbweaver.

Nice conference facilities. A long day.

Along the way:
Magnificent Frigatebird.

Wednesday

Travel day. Kissimmee, Florida. Here for a conference for three days.

Elevation: 14 feet (but we went over a 100+ foot hill to get here).
Miles: 8,605.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=107013362562471418011.00046ff7cac9ae98ff560&ll=27.196014,-82.22168&spn=8.806971,19.665527&z=6

Annie’s pancreas got better. Her liver got worse. She’s back on antibiotics. She’s improving.

Along the way:

Swamp

There are gators.


And then there are GATORS.

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary

Life in the swamp.

Naples

The weather has settled back to mid-80s. Two air conditioners handle it quite nicely.

What a great birding day Saturday was. Limpkins and Snail Kites want to be where Apple Snails are. We scoured backroads and bayous. We found Apple Snails. We found Limpkins and Snail Kites too; both life birds for us. We got that picture of the Limpkin. We didn’t do as well with the snail kite, but here is a quick video of him on a post, and then one of him flying away, showing the distinctive white tail band:

In the process of looking for our target birds, we saw so many cool things. Tons of herons, egrets, night herons, and shorebirds. Then we got birds we don’t see very often: roseate spoonbills, wood storks, a bald eagle, sandhill cranes, and ground doves. Here is the Saturday list:

1 Double-crested Cormorant
2 Anhinga
3 Great Blue Heron
4 Great Egret
5 Snowy Egret
6 Little Blue Heron
7 Tricolored Heron
8 Reddish Egret
9 Cattle Egret
10 Green Heron
11 Black-crowned Night-Heron
12 White Ibis
13 Roseate Spoonbill
14 Wood Stork
15 Black Vulture
16 Turkey Vulture
17 Osprey
18 Snail Kite
19 Bald Eagle
20 Red-shouldered Hawk
21 American Kestrel
22 Merlin
23 Common Moorhen
24 Limpkin
25 Sandhill Crane
26 Spotted Sandpiper
27 Solitary Sandpiper
28 Greater Yellowlegs
29 Lesser Yellowlegs
30 Mourning Dove
31 Common Ground-Dove
32 Belted Kingfisher
33 American Crow
34 Northern Mockingbird
35 Palm Warbler
36 Common Grackle

Oh, and Belted Kingfisher; about fifty of them over the course of the day.

Happy anniversary to us

 

Today is the first day of our sixth year full-time in the motorhome.  How can that be?  It seems like mere moments.

 

 

Life Bird!

Limpkin. We looked at a lot of swamp to get this guy.

That’s an Apple Snail he has; his favorite food.