Nichter Photography PLUS

We took the RV to Orlando twice for nearly a week each time in the last few months, both times to connect with out of town family bringing the kids to Disney. Time in-between trips ended up minimal, but well worth it to spend a week with the families. We last visited Orlando several years ago, and the amount of new construction, especially housing, and incredible amount of traffic shocked us. So, we spent both visits stuck in traffic, a lot, but of course it was worth it to see everyone. Most of the photos taken during those trips were family snaps, but I did get one or two when we visited the aquarium in Epcot. I loved the lighting, and the colors.

In-between our Orlando trips we enjoyed a two week visit to Mobile Bay. A weather front greeted us, and the entire southeast U. S., but once it cleared, spectacular sunsets lit up the sky every evening. I took this photo sitting in front of our camper, looking toward the water. We love the park, notice the distance between campsites.

Starting soon, we go back to our usual travel and photography, like this Brown Pelican sitting in the reeds, watching me and not really caring as I passed by watching him.

Or, A Study in Green

I just happened to see this Green anole resting on a Cirsium horridulum, which we call a Horrible Thistle as to not have to pronounce the Latin. Of the common thistles in the southern U.S., this one tends to get very large depending on the surrounding area and sunlight. This particular thistle stood almost as tall as me, making it around 67 inches tall, and the thickness of the main stem is apparent from the photograph. The Anole stayed very still, even as I approached, giving me the opportunity to take several shots and just stand and observe for a bit.

This closeup of the above image shows the blue around the eyes. The green anole changes color, from shades of green to shades of brown, and the blue around the eyes (if you can get that close) during the brown phase gives a positive ID. It also shows the texture of the skin, and the sharp points of the thistle. It found an ideal hiding place, it blended almost perfectly, and with the size of those thistles very few predators would risk attempting to make this anole lunch.

First the Great Egret and the alligator shared the space. The egret, with spring plumage blowing in the wind, eyeing the water for fish and the gator occasionally. The next day the egret moved on, but a large turtle, red slider, sunned itself on a log with the gator watching from the shore. Two days later, a gallinule busied itself right next to the turtle, alligator in the background.

For the next few days the gator sat alone, and then disappeared from that area. Walking the area at least once a day, I encountered several other regulars hikers looking for the alligator and the companion of the day. Though other wildlife took its place, for about a week that alligator and friends provided an enticing snapshot of the Mobile delta.

We’ve reached the end of January, a month which for us brought many more gray, overcast days than usual for this time of year. The day started sunny for a change, but windy, so we decided to take a walk at a local park, Key Vista. In addition to the trails, Key Vista extended the boardwalk to connect to the nearby Anclote Park years ago. I took this photograph of an inquisitive Red bellied woodpecker from the boardwalk, giving both he and I a more eye level look at one another than usual. A wind ruffled Osprey sat in a snag, near a branch that appeared freshly broken. The strong winds from recent storms likely cause this “widow maker” branch. We saw a lot of birds, including our winter residents like the Gray Catbirds, and with a low tide even spotted some Roseate Spoonbills through our binoculars, walking the water’s edge near the Anclote park pier. We left after a couple of hours just as the clouds came back and took away our nice, sunny day.

January weather varies near the coast in west central Florida, from beautiful, sunny days with no humidity that remind us of the coming spring, to dreary gray skies and temperatures in the 40s or 50s with a cold north wind, often within the same week. Though usually our dry season, this January started and so far remains rainy and more overcast than usual. Photography tends to slow also, brown and green predominate, and both the fauna and flora keep a low profile, though fungi look healthy due to the wetter weather.

Even though this day started gray and cold the promise of some sunshine made us grab our binoculars and cameras and head to Brooker Creek Preserve. I walked the trails, enjoying the fresh air but the colder breeze diminished the nice warmth of the sun.

At the bridge I spotted a Black-crowned night heron. Unlike me, he knew how to enjoy this day. Sitting on a branch in the sun but protected from the wind, he fluffed his feathers and tucked his head down into them, apparently sound asleep.

P.S. By cold I do mean cold for those of us who live here! I saw neighbors recently arrived from New England in shorts and a t-shirt, that cold north wind didn’t bother them.

Thank you to everyone who followed and visited our blog in 2023. We had an interesting year getting settled in the much smaller house we moved into late December 2022. We finally did a long overdue significant downsize, in living space and in storage space. It took us until July to clear out the storage unit we rented “temporarily” as we made hard decisions of what to keep and what no longer fit our life. Those hard decisions worked and we did not find ourselves missing anything we gave away or discarded. After months of arranging what we kept, living with it for a bit, and then re-arranging, I’m happy to say we are about where we need to be with the house. We love our new neighborhood. Neighbors are friendly and keep an eye out for each other.

We also traveled more and longer, taking advantage of the ease of closing up our smaller house. We explored more of the southeast US in our motor-home, finding fascinating new places to visit and photograph. Midnight, our cat, settled into both the smaller home and the extended RV travel very well. Sometimes when traveling it seemed she would almost prefer we went smaller and moved into the motor home!

Professionally we re-assessed where we are now with our photography and how the world of photography changed especially over the past few years, and feel excited about the possibilities. Our naturalist work slowed as fewer opportunities working on projects with local park and preserves became available, so we decided to expand our scope and create more of our own opportunities.

We have a lot of short and long trips planned for 2024. One of our goals for this year is stay longer in each place we visit, rather than a few days and on to the next destination. We already planned to revisit a few places where we wished we had stayed longer on our first trip.

This blog continues and we hope you still visit us. My goal is still to publish every Wednesday, though life and travel do interfere sometimes.

We wish you a very Happy New Year!

We spent a few days at the Festival of Lights at Stephen Foster State Park in White Springs, FL as we do every year. I’ve posted photos in years past, and many of those same lights are still there. Two new ones caught my attention, Reindeer School, above and Santa with a sleigh pulled by that most iconic of Florida reptiles, alligators, below.

Very Happy Holidays to everyone. Karl and I are looking forward to 2024 and continuing our photography and travel. More about that next week…

I often mention our RV trips, starting in 2010 with a very used 10-year old van camper, and after several iterations of other RVs our close to perfect Itasca Reyo 26′ Type A, 12 years old but the ideal vehicle and layout for us. Our usual trips last 14 days or less, and usually involved traveling between a couple of places. We decided it was time to see if we liked living in that 26′ for a longer period of time. So, we left October 8 and explored mid-south Georgia for a month, planning to stay at least a week in each place. In spite of a tow car breakdown requiring us to slightly re-arranging our travel plans by a few days just one week out we found it a comfortable way to travel and live. Midnight, our initially reluctant traveling cat, seemed quite at home this trip, even she liked the new relaxed pace and adapted well to living in the RV.

Of course this meant much more initial planning than usual since we had family coming into town and had to be back in early November. We give precedence to state and local parks for the natural settings (about what you would expect from two naturalists and nature photographers), but where not available we booked private parks. That led to the discovery of Four County RV Park in Danville, GA. This small, family run park in the country is only 30 minutes from Macon, and we loved it from the start. I walked the pond each morning, and all the photos in this post came from those walks. A hiking trail is under construction along with other improvements. The sites are open for the most part, but spaced, and of course full hook-ups. The couple who own the park are nice and very helpful, and we enjoyed several long conversations with them on the park and their plans for the future.

Short trips will remain a part of our life due to other commitments, but from now on we will be searching for times we can take off and live the nomad life, if only for a month or two.

We both learned the history of Andersonville Prison long ago when studying the U.S. Civil War in school. Nearly 13,000 people died there of disease, exposure, and starvation. The information in the videos and tours describes the conditions from diaries of those who survived. It also puts perspective on this one site; Andersonville’s infamous reputation started even before the war ended, but very poor treatment of POWs during the Civil War happened on both sides. We arrived a little early for the opening of the POW Museum so toured some of the area, then the museum when it opened.

The museum offers two 30 minute videos, playing alternately on the hour and half hour. We watched both and highly recommend them. One is about Andersonville and a good introduction to the two driving tours, the other is about U.S. POWs and interviews people who served and were captured and held, and also reads from diaries from those held in other wars including in Andersonville. The museum contains exhibits of the POW experience from all wars. Both videos, the museum, and the driving tours impressed us. We stayed far longer than we anticipated.

Upon leaving the ranger asked us our opinion. We both searched for the words to describe it. It was a powerful experience being there, knowing what happened, and learning more about the people who endured the experience of prisoners of war. The Ranger said that those emotions are common from people who visit. We both would repeat the experience, and learned a lot.

Early morning and the temperature already reached 77 degrees with some pretty high humidity. Not bad for west central Florida on September 30, well, a few degrees above average but after our record breaking heat during the summer, I’ll take it.

I purposely arrived very early for a class at Brooker Creek Preserve (Tarpon Springs, FL), and spent the time on a leisurely walk on the trails, in spite of feeling warm and sticky as soon as I left the air conditioned car. As to leisurely, the abundance of hungry mosquitoes did increase my pace quite a bit. Carolina chickadees and black and white warblers flitted overhead on the bird trail, two Common yellow-throat warblers flew by landing just long enough for me to get a look, and this Brown Thrasher landed right in front of me as I rejoined the main trail. I hoped for better light this overcast morning, but no such luck.

As to the class, well, I tried for years to teach myself sketching with little progress. Some online courses helped me somewhat, at least my drawings no longer looked like stick figures, but they still lacked any real features and looked awkward. I signed up for two four-hour botanical illustration workshops, and the wonderful instructor did a great job getting me past the really awkward drawings and giving me some confidence. People looked at my drawing and could actually identify it as an American Beauty Berry, though let’s face it, in Autumn in this area they are everywhere and those purple berry clusters are a dead giveaway.