See heron play with fish

In Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge (which sits right north of the Everglades), I saw a very cooperative and generally phlegmatic great blue heron. I got to within a few yards of it while it was looking for fish in one of the channels. Just as I started clicking on with my camera, it found its prey, and so I found myself in right place and at the right time to capture this funny sequence:















I think I will have sushi for dinner tonight.

Sequoia Grove

This was the second time that I've been in a redwood grove (and the first time that I've seen actual sequoias), but I had lost all sense of how flabbergastingly big these trees were. If you've seen them, you know that these picture (and probably no pictures) do them justice, but I've tried my best to capture their awe here. (These are Giant Sequoias in Yosemite's Mariposa Grove.)

Yosemite Views

Every turn in Yosemite leads to a stunning view. I've seen deeper backdrops, and I've been to higher lookouts, but never have I experienced so much drama packed into a single field of vision. It is an incredible place, something that by right should have existed only in book illustrations, and that it is real is nothing less than a miracle!

(Check out the church at the bottom of this cliff!)

On the way to the Glacier Point lookout, we passed a big sign that said "Don't feed the coyotes!" Naturally, when we got to the parking lot, there was one looking for handouts right there:

Giant Sequoia panorama

This is from Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park. Every sequoia is so tall that the only way to take a picture of one for me was to compose a vertical panorama. So keep scrolling down and enjoy! (By the way, this tree was already a thousand years old by the time of American Revolution.)

Burrowing Owls

These are possibly the cutest birds I've seen on my trip to Florida. They are owls - tiny little owls on really long legs that live in burrows in open spaces. These owls' home is a baseball diamond in a state park. While their burrows are roped off so people don't step directly on them, they are otherwise in the midst of pretty intensive human activity - but they don't seem to mind all that much.

This time of the year, the owls were having chicks already, but the first one I saw was the matriarch of the family:

I wish I could do that:

After a while, the chicks - owlets - starting coming out one by one:

Until finally, the entire family cooperated on a group portrait:

Anhinga

Anhinga is a relative of cormorants, but it's more ancient-looking than them. Just like the cormorants though, it doesn't have any oil on its skin, so after diving for fish it has to come out and dry out its wings in the sun. It strikes an imposing pose as it does that. Anhingas are also known as snake-birds, and that's because of the way they swim - their bodies are completely submerged in water, so only their thin necks and heads are visible. Females have light necks and heads, males are all-black.

Florida Wildlife in 15 Awesome Close-ups

No cute stories, no names, just some beautiful pictures: