Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Florida critters

(Collage details are MUCH better if you click to enlarge it!)

Clockwise from top left:

*My best guess is that these are immature American White Ibis. They're often confused with Limpkins

*Florida Sandhill Crane. These made an awful lot of noise for being so shy. They sounded to me like a turkey. But what do I know about bird calls!

*Brown Anole. We kept calling them Geckos. They were fun to watch, and though I usually tell the kids to leave things alone, these were so plentiful, I didn't have a problem with handling them. I got a few shots of these fellas, but most of them came out a little fuzzy.

*Ugly duck on a stick. Maybe you don't think it's ugly, but it's some kind of waterfowl, and I don't know how to identify it. The main reason I didn't scrap this photo, is because of the funky stuff at the base of the tree. They look like stalagmites, don't they?

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There was plenty more out there somewhere, but I'm glad to have missed some of it!

8 comments:

Lifelong Learner said...

Craver,

We used to have a family of Sandhill Cranes that would come into our yard in Florida. Our kids would feed them bread. Every year we'd get the same parents and their new little one. Sometimes there would be two. They are so neat. My husband said hearing them fly in made him think that that's what dinosaurs might have sounded like.

lime said...

oh i do like the geckos, anoles, lil lizards. i enjoyed seeing them when we lived in trinidad mainly because i knew it meant they were eating up the mosquitoes....and they are kinda cute.

Shammickite said...

FYI The ugly duck on a stick is a cormorant.

imac said...

Bril work Craver, all beauties.

To answer your Q - my friend
18-135 lens - hand held shoot at 135 Auto.
Load to computer zoom once and crop.(stop breathing to shoot.lol.)

MrsEvenSo... said...

It's very refreshing to see your home state through visitors eyes. It is very beautiful. Thanks for sharing your awe and wonder for God's creatures along with the oddity of our signage!

Craver Vii said...

Stacy, that's so cool that the same parents came back each time. I wish I heard these guys fly. All I heard was the gobble-gobble type of call they made... while I was napping.

Lime, that's what I like about spiders, too. They eat mosquitos, and that makes them alright in my book. I just wish I could have gotten a sharper image of these anoles. I took several shots on different occasions.

Shammickite, I think you're right; thanks for the lead. Now that you mention it, my best guess would be a Double-crested Cormorant. I hurried to take those pics, and we can't see well enough to know whether it had blue eyes. Supposedly, these birds are a fisherman's nuisance, as they sometimes interfere by stealing bait.

Imac, I think I have high blood pressure. :-( When I hold my breath to be still, my heartbeat pounds like an unbalanced washing machine. I appreciate your encouragement, and I'll keep trying to improve my pics.

MrsEvenSo, your comment makes me wonder what a visitor sees when they visit the Western suburbs of Chicago. I hope you get the chance some day.

donsands said...

Nice photos Craver. Wildlife never gets old. And yet in the New Earth, ..well, we ain't seen nothing yet!

mommanator said...

Love those gecko's but I never seem able to catch one