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Cattle Egret
with Barn Swallow it has caught
Dry Tortugas, Florida
1 May 1988

Cattle Egrets are a species known to wander. They made it to the U.S. on their own in the early 1950s and are now a common species all over the Americas. I once found a dead Cattle Egret on a rocky beach in Antarctica. There are no insects on Antarctica, so that particular Cattle Egret just wandered too far. Such might be said for Florida's Dry Tortugas. They are called "dry" for good reason. There is no fresh water. Birds that end up there and are too tired to move on, simply die. It is a daily task of employees at Fort Jefferson to walk around and pick up and discard the Cattle Egret carcasses before they open the fort to the birdwatchers each spring day. On this day my group watched a starving Cattle Egret (there are few large insects for the egrets to feed on) grab a Barn Swallow. It certainly made for a strange scene!

This is the most amazing display of Calochortus kennedyii we've ever seen! The display extends 3 to 5 miles south of the Haiwee reservoir road and equally to the north. It extends from hwy 395 to the reservoir to the east. There are 5 to 15 plants per square meter. It must be 100,000s of plants, in full bloom on 5/13.

This leucistic individual is Salamander C. This one has been photographed and observed since 2010 many times by Don Scallen and it had at least been alive two years before that, making it thirteen years old- two years older then me!

Too-cute puffball that showed up under my house's eaves after the recent nighttime temperature drop. Thought it was a second Black Phoebe joining the first one that already sleeps here, but after turning fill light way up on this photo it looks more like a wren.