Great Horned Owl in Crooked Pond

Pat and Charlie called us to say that a Great Horned Owl was roosting in a tree near their place. I had not expected the Owl roosting in a palm tree, but here he/she is. 

This picture is cropped to the limit, but I think it still shows the magic of such a large [22'l 44" wing span] bird right here in our neighbourhood.

[You can click on the picture to see it larger.  Enjoy...]

White Pelican, Reddish Egret

Ding Darling is a Federal Park with a healthy financial backing from Sanibel inhabitants. Our weekly visits on Wednesday mornings always seem to provide us with entertainment.

White Pelicans, are very large birds [108" wingspan] and are quite dramatic when landing. Here is one of the last moments before touchdown. 

The Reddish Egret has very active and interesting feeding habits. They often just spread their wings, creating shade, and simply wait for the fish to find the shade. 

At other times, like the bird below, it is more interesting to run around, stir up the water, jerk to the right, turn around, stop and reverse, jump, and try other things to catch something to eat.

This is the first stage: start running in one direction...

Turn around quickly and dive in...

During a later dive, this was the resulting small fish, little more than an inch or so.

Same fish, now to be flipped in the air, and swallowed.

Another awkward stop and plunge, likely another small fish.

Of course, neighbours can sometimes get too close, so a short charge towards them will make for more hunting space.

  
This particular bird is being monitored and has been fitted with a transmitter.  The transmitter causes a small bump in the middle of the bird's back, and is fitted with an arial that is about 8" long. If you look carefully at the next picture, you can see the bump and arial between the two wings. The bird is facing towards your left and the arial is going right, just touching the line between the sand and the water. You can click on any picture to see them all larger.

Apparently, this does not harm or hamper the Egret, but...  

I guess the information gained is valuable in protecting this endangered species.

One more plunge, one more morsel...

The last morsel seems to have been a small shell: grist for the mill?

Pictures from Tuesday and Wednesday

On Tuesday, I joined Charlie to go to a Shrimp Boat landing just before the final bridge to Ft Myers Beach. Charlie bearing his canvas and paints: I, my camera.

As we drove to this quiet place, we went from the super hyped tourist area to the working class area. Suddenly, after a few twists and turns, we ended up in a small area where the main business is shrimp: harvesting, processing and shipping.

As with most marinas, there are 'throw aways'. This Pepsi dispenser was just stored beside large, old, motorized winches that likely served their owners well in hauling their fishing nets in.

That's Charlie on the far right, already set up to do his painting.

I found old rusty winches interesting and here are a few pictures of the colourful rust that I found.

Even the old cables that hauled the fishing nets had interesting colours.

Next is Charlie just starting to sketch what he sees.

Here is close-up of one of those very powerful winches. The winch sidewall had very interesting and colourful rust patterns.

This is the blunt un-interpreted view that Charlie was painting.

Shrimp boats have very specialized and interesting fishing equipment. Unfortunately, this equipment scrapes the bottom of the sea bed, and is not environmentally friendly, but the shrimp is so tasty...

Apparently these boats leave the harbour with two men as crew, with rations for a month or more. They go where the shrimp are thought to be: some boats will go as far as NFLD to fill their hold.

Here are shots of some of their gear.

Some marinas contain a field of broken dreams, [old boats that owners desperately try to rebuild or fix], this one had some old equipment just standing there, not necessarily abandoned, but not necessarily in service either. This wheel still held up a useable trailer tanker, but suffered the indignities of the local dog...

Here is Charlie a couple of hours later: the painting is almost completed. One of the local workers stopped his huge piece of machinery, walked over to examined the work in progress, and stared at it for quite a while. His first word were: you have been doing this for a very long time, haven't you.

One would not expect a dockworker to have an appreciation of fine art. We often assume that some groups are this or that. Every person we meet is an individual, with his/her own life experience that brought them to the person we meet today. That may have nothing to do with their training, their tastes, or their feelings. I think we all need to be reminded not to presume.    ...often...

This is the underside of a aluminium pontoon that was cleaned of its accumulated barnacles, in preparation for installing a fibreglass membrane to make it leakproof. I just thought that the play of light made for an interesting pattern.

This marina caters to shrimp boats.  The boats return with a hold of shrimp that is then processed, frozen, and packed in these 5'X5' [I think] pallets, then moved to a refrigerated truck with a powerful forklift. There are more shrimp in this picture than I could possibly eat in a month of Sundays...

At the far side of the marina was this storage shed for smaller pleasure boats.

This is just one side of this 4 story facility.

Next is the awesome, huge, and powerful 'front end loader' that parks and removes the boats from the building. 

Today, being Wednesday, Joan and I went to the Ding Darling Wildlife reserve, where our friends Phyllis and Dave are Docents for the weekly drive through.

This weekly event is always filled with surprises and much laughter. Today we welcomed Richard who is a phenomenal birder and photographer, from upper state NY. His neighbours Chris and Bruce were also there, as well as Dr Bart the ultimate authority on bird identification.

Now shore birds are numerous and often similar in size, colouring, etc.  Their identification is often [if not always] difficult. A batch of a few dozen shorebirds showed up and caused some identification differences. 

These long term, great friends came to different conclusions: oh dear, what to do. Eventually, each side found evidence that they were both right: there were samples of each genus in the bunch of brown shorebird they were looking at...

Meanwhile, I just marvelled at these white pelicans fishing off the bottom, which I didn't think they did. [I have a lot to learn...] Either way, these guys were fishing together to scare stuff from the bottom so one of them could snag a snack.

After leaving Ding Darling, we went to a nearby restaurant that serves small bowls of vegetarian / vegan food which tastes very good and is very filling and likely good for you...

As we left the counter where they created our bowls, the owner said there was a Screech Owl just under the balcony roof.

These are small 8" owls that sleep most of the day.  I think this one slept with his eyes open... 

I suspect he might also be a red morph of a Screech Owl, but, what do I know...

Serendipity, the blessing for those who look.  Enjoy!

Adventures with Jan

It takes about an hour and a half to drive from Ft Myers to Nokomis where Jan lives. We [Joan] planned to attend a horse show that happens every Friday night in Venice, Florida, just a hop away from Jan's.

Jan had planned a visit to the Venice outdoor photographic exhibit. We were all challenged to think of how an 'outside' photographic exhibit could happen, let alone last over a month, and we were very pleasantly surprised to find a very elaborate photo exhibit on either side of a very long fence between two bridges. This exhibit will tour many american cities as well as Calgary! Unfortunately, I didn't make any photographs so you will have to trust me that it was a very worthwhile two hours of walking around the fence and reading the story behind the photographs that were printed on continuous fabric.  Very interesting.

After a delicious late lunch that included shrimp, were returned to Jan's to then leave for the horse show which was a Grand Prix Show Jumping event nearby.

Rain was in the schedule so the show started half an hour early. It was already after sunset, so the show jumping area was lit with strong lights.

Unfortunately, the lighting was not really strong enough to make sharp pictures of moving targets, so most pictures were deleted at first sight. Here are a few remaining shots to give you a very limited feeling of this significant show.

This rider was the first to go, as well as the last to go, on a different horse. Here he is showing his horse this first oxer followed by two single bars, likely the downfall of many riders.

Eventually, this rider would win the whole event in the last ride of the evening: quite a dramatic ending to a wet evening where there was only a single clear round: the last one!

There were a few refusals where the rider lost his/her seat. This was one near where I stood.

Fortunately, nobody [rider or horse] was hurt during the whole event.

Because of the dim light and the zoom required for some pictures, these pictures are not the sharpest in the knife-block...

As usual, you can see all pictures larger by clicking on one.

On Saturday afternoon, we ended up going to an orchid show in Sarasota: apparently the largest on the Gulf Coast. It turns out, the show displays were much larger and showy, but the variety of orchids shown were less than the Ottawa Orchid Society Show coming in late April.

Due to dim light once again, these pictures may not be the sharpest...

In spite of that, I hope these will give you a feeling for what was being shown.

The show may have been the largest on the Gulf coast, but it did not measure up to the standards of variety of the show in Ottawa.  Keep in mind that I might be prejudiced because I was a co-founder of the Ottawa show...  

Either way, it really was a stunning show of warm growing orchids, and  great way to end our adventures with Jan.

If any reader of this blog has the opportunity to visit a local orchid show, please treat yourself to a very special experience. Trust me, you will not regret the entrance fee, nor the time spent.