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.

A new place

A new place for this trip anyway. Crystal Lake RV Resort in Naples, over on the Gulf side of the peninsula. We haven’t been here since the last time we were in Florida, 5 or 6 years ago. We like it. It’s a nice place to be.

On the way here, we met up with a dish repair guy north of Miami, in Hollywood, to finish up a repair on our television dish. The television dish is fairly new. We got it last January, so it’s pretty soon for something to go wrong. It has been out of commission for a couple weeks though; ever since the chain that controls the elevation broke. The chain was rusted clear through; the result of only one winter on the beach in Texas. They have beaches here in Florida too, but the guy here had never seen anything like this. Must be that persistent Texas wind.

We have never seen anything like the drivers around Miami either. They’ve been watching too much television here; too much Miami Vice and NASCAR, resulting in too many adrenaline moments for us. The most extreme move was passing us at 100 mph Talladega Style, then going three wide on a two lane stretch of Freeway. That’s just not right.

We’re glad to get out of there alive. We’re glad to have Annie back. We’re glad to have the television dish back. We hope to have the rear air-conditioner back after the mobile repair guy comes tomorrow. We’re getting by on one air-conditioner in the middle of a South Florida heat wave. This afternoon we got 95 degrees.

On our way here we passed a Boatswagen driving down the highway.

http://boatswagen.com/default.aspx

Life on the road.

8,395 miles.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=107013362562471418011.00046ff7cac9ae98ff560&ll=27.974998,-82.001953&spn=8.744855,19.665527&z=6