Mirrors, she can deal with, that’s a nice clean image of a puppy. Sometimes she plays with the puppy in the mirror and tries to hand it her toys. But her reflection in the glass patio door at night, a shadow reflection, that’s another thing entirely. There is a phantom out there on the deck that she can see, but also see through.
Very scary stuff. If we turn the porch light on though, that helps, so sometimes the porch light has to stay on until she goes to bed.
Judy and I don’t usually take airplanes; we just go where we can in the motorhome. That trip to Florida was different though. Time is of the essence, so I flew.
Before I flew, I applied for the TSA Precheck. I got fingerprinted and survived a background check. I now have a Known Person Number that I’ve registered on my account at Southwest Airlines and I automatically get a precheck checkmark on my boarding pass. That made getting through security soo much easier. Instead of being treated as a person who might be a terrorist, I got treated as if I were probably not a terrorist. There was no line. I didn’t have to take off my shoes, go through the full body scan, or even take my laptop out of the knapsack. It was a snap.
The birding was fun. I started out with 450 species for the year and added 15 over the course of four days. I drove 500 miles, visited 18 different birding sites, and walked 27 miles. So now we’re at 465 bird species recorded. It’s not my target number of 500, but still it’s a pretty good number.
Now I’m back home with Judy.
And the puppies.
I often refer to Henry as the White Shadow, because we never get more than a few feet away from him, and then not for long. Now the White Shadow has a shadow.
We covered a lot of ground this year.
I’ve been meaning to write a summary of the Alaska Journey, but how can I summarize something like that? If I were to just write down the highlights, I’d end up listing every day of the trip!
Here I am, trying to get as many birds as I can in as few days as are left, and I end up on a stakeout. I spent two hours last night watching for the Antillean Palm-swift where it has been appearing on Marathon Key, and got nothing. Got a room, spent the night, and was back at it at 7:30 this morning. The guy from Key Largo was already there. The couple from Nebraska showed up a little later. At 9:40, the swift appeared! Year bird. Life bird. Antillean Palm-swift. It is a rare bird; not often seen in the U.S . It lives in the Caribbean:
Swifts are really fast and erratic flyers. No way I could get a good shot as it screamed past at hyper-speed, but Harold from Key West did and was kind enough to forward a photo.
I love that about birding; instant community. Thank you, Harold!
Worked my way back up The Keys.
Saw some great scenery,
The Keys always make me think about Hemingway.
Had a close encounter of the manatee kind. Saw what looked like a couple boulders partly exposed in the boat basin at the Deering Estate. There aren’t supposed to be boulders in a boat basin. Walked over to investigate and the boulder in front saw me, blew out through her nose,
…and swirled away.
The smaller one behind followed. Mama manatee and her calf.
Didn’t add any more year birds to the list.
Done for the day, headed north back toward Ft Lauderdale on Interstate 75, driving attentively but still scanning for birds too, I glanced to the right from an overpass and there amongst a bunch of wading birds standing next to a canal, 15 wood storks! I’ve been looking for that bird for four days! A drive-by year bird!
Headed home tomorrow am. The year bird count by day for this trip: 8,3,2,2. In that order. The year-list stands at 465. 35 short.
Here is a video Judy just sent me of the puppies playing.
Henry is safe on the couch; Jesse can’t get up there yet.
And two more birds: Glossy Ibis and Purple Gallinule. Here’s the Purple Gallinule.
And a catbird.
And a dancing heron.
A sunning Anhinga.
And that shadow in the trail up ahead.
It has teeth.
And I’m not going any farther down that trail today.
It has happened to us before here in Florida. We have the next day all planned, then we wake up totally socked in by fog. So I opened the hotel room drapes this morning and nothing. Totally blank. Not a hint of definition of anything outside. I took a closer look. I was looking at a wall outside my window. I had checked in in the dark last night and didn’t notice that my only view was the broadside of a wall. Nothing but diffuse indirect light could make it to the window.
No problem. The day went on as planned. I focused on big obvious birds in the swamps, like wood stork, limpkin, and purple gallinule. I didn’t get any of them, but I did pick up three warblers, pine, black-throated blue, and American redstart. I worked my way south to Homestead. Tomorrow I’ll go thrash about in the Everglades and see what I can scare up.
And just when you thought we were through with the trip map…
They have gators here in Florida too. (Except their gators are crocodiles.)
If you zoom in on the face, you can see teeth that point both up and down. That’s a crocodile. If you only see the teeth that point down, it’s an alligator.
