2013 March 30, from Ocala National Forest, North Central Florida Hello, Everybody, These last two months in southern Florida have produced thousands of great photographs, and even after discarding most of them I am still left with a large number -- hence, the new slideshow is a 'monster' which will take a while to download. After a slow start in western Florida, things really picked up. My first glimpse of the Everglades was not as I expected -- it seems more like a prairie than a swamp, at least from the road. However, off the pavement you are into mangrove swamp which spreads for a huge area, extremely wild except for a few canoe/kayak trails which have 'Chickee' platforms on pilings for overnight camping. As I approached the National Park I was thrilled to see a Wood Stork flying overhead -- I had been concerned if I would see one at all -- little did I guess I would see more Wood Storks than any other bird over the next couple of months. They are beautiful in flight, rather prehistoric looking. The park has two nice 'dry' campgrounds, uncrowded, with birds flitting about. The prize for a birder, especially a photographer, is the Anhinga Trail, just inside the park entrance. As you walk down the levee toward the boardwalks, you are greeted by dozens of Black Vultures, alligators and large shorebirds: Anhinga, Egret, Heron, Cormorant, all within 3-30 feet and extremely tame. With a telephoto lens, you must often back up to frame all of the bird. There are numerous other little trails through the mangrove swamps, and small ponds which attract the birds. Nearer Miami I visited a couple of manmade wetland bird preserves which serve as part of water treatment schemes -- these are very beautifully done, with long boardwalks and lots of varied habitat and lots of birds up fairly close. At one there were Anhinga checks in the nest, which made for nice pictures. At Fisheating Creek Preserve I met up with Steve and Sheila Demler, friends of Joey Tuttle in Santa Cruz. They spend several months camping in southern Florida each winter from Ontario, and Steve is a fellow Canon telephoto lens photographer. They are also kayakers, which has introduced a major new development into my traveling and camping life. I bought a rather poor inflatable kayak/canoe to try out, and we paddled to a huge Wood Stork rookery in the Peace River for great close-up photographic opportunities. This convinced me that I wanted to carry a kayak with me on the camper, and after paddling Steve's higher performance sea kayak for less than a minute, that I wanted one too. So I am just about to depart Florida for northwest Michigan to pick up a really fine and unusually light kayak: Then it was time to meet EV at the Fort Lauderdale airport -- she spent a week with me, first at the Everglades, then we took an all-day seaplane trip to Dry Tortugas National Park, 70 miles out past Key West. Flying out over the shallow water of the Keys was interesting, and the pale transparent turquoise water reminded me strongly of the winter I spent in the Bahamas with Ben before sailing transatlantic. Several bird species are easy to view there which are not on the mainland, which adds special interest. We visited the wetlands where I had been earlier, and were amazed to see seven Sora in plain view in one small area -- usually one is lucky to see just one skulking in the reeds. We were still hoping to see a Limpkin, a Florida specialty and another with the reputation of a skulker hard to see, and amazingly enough just before we left for the day one started calling very loudly, perched on a stump posing obligingly for all the photographers. We kayaked to the Wood Stork rookery again in my inflatable as a crowded double, then rented kayaks at Fisheating Creek too paddle a bit in the mangroves. At one point we saw a Red-bellied Woodpecker, common in Florida, and for the first time I saw the reddish patch which gives it its name. After looking industriously and fruitlessly at four sites claimed to be good for seeing the endangered Florida Scrub-jay, I read on the internet about a site (Lyonia) farther north which sounded like a real winner. Having seen no birds in the first 15 minutes of my walk, I played the bird's call on my iPod, and within three seconds there was one perched on a branch just a few feet overhead, too close to photograph. It then flew down and perched on my hat (on top of my head) for several seconds before perching an a twig where I could photograph it. As I was ready to drive out of the parking lot, another flew in and perched on the lot's perimeter fence! So it's been a great winter in Florida: mostly nice weather, seldom too hot, no mosquitoes, lots of good low-traffic roads. I expect I'll be back next winter. The server address is: http://www.meetmarsha.com/~john (note the tilde ~ before the john part) The new slideshow is 13_02_03_Feb_Mar_FL.exe (at the top of the list). NEW: For Mac users there is a .zip file to download, and here is how to use it: go to http://meetmarsha.com/~john/ and click on the blue line for a list of slideshows click on a zip file for a slideshow after downloading, open the zip file open the extracted folder which will be in the same folder and have the same name as the zip file (likely in Downloads) select all of the jpg files, using Cmd+A (select with this method to keep them in order) use the space-bar for a Quick View slideshow use the spread arrows in the upper right corner for full screen don't click the menu bar, it will disappear use the right and left arrow keys to navigate use Escape to exit full screen optional: delete the zip and/or extracted folder Boilerplate follows: Each browser is a little different, but generally you can either choose OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK and then OPEN if you want to have it your hard drive for future re-viewing. Right-Arrow or Right-Click or SpaceBar will advance to the next picture. Left-Arrow or Left-Click will return to the previous picture. Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc if the show ever seems stuck. If you would like any of the individual images, perhaps to print, just let me know. I periodically remove older slideshows to put up new ones; let me know if you want me to send you a CD of any of the 'back issues', or of all of them from 2004-2012 along with their accompanying emails, on CDs. And if you don't want to get any more emails like this one in the future, just let me know. If you have friends who might be interested, I'll be happy to add them to my email list and they can download the slideshows if they have a broadband internet connection. None of this is commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the pictures, the better. Regards, John Armitage 1-970-250-6080 john@qued.com