Recently while on a trip along the St. Joseph Peninsula I stumbled into one of my very favorite of shoreline critters – the ghost crab. Even though they are very common all over Florida’s sandy coasts, the ghost crab is the master of camouflage and quite often never seen at all. Ghost crabs make up
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One of the most common bits of advice that I’ve heard given to budding new nature photographers is that you don’t have to go far from home to get the best shots. I’ve heard this many times over the years, and I’ve given this same advice on many occasions. All too often I hear people
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The coral bean (Erythrina herbacea), also known as the Cherokee bean or the red cardinal, is a common springtime bloomer found all over the state of Florida. I’ve seen them in dense woodlands, sandy pine scrubs, and growing in hardwood hammocks at the edges of swamps. From the Everglades to the Georgia border, these brilliantly
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Sometimes it just happens this way. It suddenly gets quiet. The wind dies down. The birds become silent and get settled for the night. A sudden hush falls over the wilderness, and then the sun slips into the sea, and the world goes to sleep.
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One of the most difficult birds for me to find in Florida has been the red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus). It is a very skittish bird - even for a woodpecker, and tends to avoid people if encountered. I've seen them only a couple of times in the Osceola National Forest north of Gainesville and in remote areas near the Georgia border north of Tallahassee, and only from a distance of at least five hundred feet.
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For Florida springtime wildflowers, there is no place better than the Apalachicola National Forest. By mid-April (a little later this year due to the long winter) the sides of many of the roads are glittering with a rainbow of the most vivid colors and hues that nature can display. This was the case when I
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Last month I was in the Big Cypress National Preserve looking for new material forwww.FloridaNaturePhotography.com - particularly birds in breeding plumage when I spotted this amazing tricolored heron on the side of the road. It was in the most resplendent of breeding colors. Bright blue beak and face, deep blood-red eyes, violet and blue-gray plumage, completed with snowy white plumes at the back of its crown. Just gorgeous!
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