Tag Archive | Photography

The Delaware Skipper

While photographing a wild aster a Delaware skipper landed on a flower, much to my delight. Like butterflies and moths, skippers are in the lepidoptera family of insects. There are many species of skippers; most of them are small and usually dull colors of orange-brown and tan. Most skippers resemble a F-22 Raptor jet fighter. […]

Mermaid’s Toenails

Another shell, we found along the wrack line of the beach at Sunken Meadow State Park on New York’s Long Island was the delicate Jingle Shell. Jingles have shiny, thin, translucent shells. This organism gets its name from the sound made when the shells bump against each other when strung on a necklace. These bi-valve […]

Slippers on the Beach

After overturning horseshoe crab shells on the beach at New York’s Sunken Meadow State Park located on the Long Island Sound, my granddaughters turned their attention to the shells that washed up in the wrack. Most of the shells were Atlantic slipper shells – marine snails. If you overturn the shell and look at the […]

The Great Egret – Symbol of America’s Conservation Movement

Anyone visiting freshwater wetlands or salt water marshes today are bound to see dozens of great egrets wading in the shallow water hunting for fish, frogs, crayfish and insects. This was not the case in the late 1800’s when plume hunters nearly wiped out this bird, other egret species and numerous wading birds. Egret feathers, […]

Warning! This is Gruesome and Nauseating!!!

Eastern gray squirrels are frequent visitors to our backyard bird feeders here in central Florida.  One day in early August, a squirrel appeared full of what I thought were cancerous growths on its body. The growths were large, dangling enlargements that protruded an inch or so from the pelt of the squirrel. Despite its “diseased” […]