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The Piscivorous Double-crested Cormorant
Visit the any U.S. shoreline or inland waterway and you are sure to find this ubiquitous bird. It is one of the oldest birds; its ancestors date back to the dinosaurs. The cormorant has an insatiable appetite for fish. It is a superb swimmer, using its powerful legs and webbed feet to propel […]
Foggy Morning
A dense fog forms overnight along the west coast of Florida. It lingers until late morning giving me an opportunity to snap a few photographs along the edge of Lake Tsala Apopka in Citrus County. It is a surreal landscape, quiet, misty, and subdued. The water laps gently along the shore. I hear the plop […]
Looks Like a Duck, Acts Like a Duck, Swims with the Ducks, But It’s Not a Duck!
This small slate gray duck-like bird with a white beak is often mistaken for a duck because it is seen in and around our waterways. But if you look closer at its feet when it walks out of the water you will see this bird lacks the webbed feet that ducks have. It is the […]
Water Turkeys in Florida
A large, strange inky black bird with a snake-like head and webbed feet swims under water hunting fish in Lake Tsala Apopka. It is an underwater fishing expert and is skilled at spearing fish with its long, thin, pointed beak. It emerges from the water, swims to a limb, climbs up and hangs its soaked […]
I Do Not Know Mushrooms
Mushrooms are ubiquitous. Mushrooms grow on mulch in gardens, on rotting logs and leaf litter of forest floors and in manicured lawns. Some are so distinctive that they are easy to identify. Others look so similar that it is difficult to discern one from another. During my career as a biologist in New York, I was determined to […]
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