Via Flickr:
What is unique about this picture? No, it’s not the two rather large alligators watching this bird as he fishes. He’s a Great White Heron, or "white morph" as some call it. When we first came up on him fishing today we just thought it was another American Egret, we saw quite a few today in the Everglades, but with a little closer inspection he looked sort of dirty, skinny and, "where are his beautiful mating feathers"?

Like a ton of bricks falling on my head I realized that we were observing a Great White Heron, often called the Great Blue Heron White Morph. WoW! How cool!

The two lazy alligators in the view just laid there for hours watching the birds and people from their slippery sloped water way. Other smaller ‘gators in the small water hole in the picture were busy feeding, one alligator was even jumping clear out of the water to impress someone. I had never seen that type of behavior in an alligator before. I tried for a couple hours to record the gator coming clear out of the water, an impressive sight to be sure, but I just could not tell when he was going to leap. The stupid alligator must have thought he was part flying fish that also lived in the adjacent Eco-system and would also occasionally jump clear out of the water. I’ll post a sequence of shots from this afternoon’s encounter with the Great White Heron of South Florida.

Check out my blog at jon-mark.com

Via Flickr:
Every once-in-a-while you have to risk a pile up on the turnpike while you reach around to the back seat to grab the camera for a quick shot. Sir Gus the Kissing Camel is a mascot for the Shrine’rs in Orlando and his caravan was spotted just outside Orlando getting on the Turnpike. This bright yellow, red and green bus is Shangri-La to the single humped Camel and is the ultimate marketing tool for the organization. I just had to grab a quick picture even though we were clipping right along. I got so close to the back of the bus that Gus began spitting at me. I first though it was beginning to rain but quickly realized that it was perfectly clear. Enjoy the shot.

Via Flickr:
Joy riding with an Osprey in Daytona Beach on the Sling Shot ride. He flies in when the ride closes and stays all night until it opens again. In the morning we find him hunting right from the top of the ride seat case. The guy who runs the ride reports that he often finds fish parts all over the cover they have to use to keep the seat clean for humans wanting a thrill ride.

Today, Jo and I spent about 5 hours at Green Cay in Palm Beach, Florida. It’s a wonderful wetland area and just full of really neat birds.

One of the neatest locals is the American Bittern, I call him Charley for short. We’ve seen Charlie on many occasions in the Cay and have spent some really neat time watching and photographing him. Today, while we were watching him up close on the North end of the Cay, he reached out and, to our surprise and amazement, grabbed a snake out of the water beside him and started to eat him. As you can imagine the snake was not impressed with Charley and grabbed the closest fallen Bulrush and wrapped himself into a knot and then wrapped a bunch of times around the limb.

For about 15 minutes Charley and the snake fought and fought providing on-lookers some great entertainment. Charlie tugged and tugged and pulled, and chewed and pulled some more but the snake did not want to give up his life to become a meal for Charley, the American Bitter of Green Cay. I was sequence shooting and actually have, sort of, stop-motion-animation with 100s of full resolution shots from the time Charley grabbed the snake until he finally untied him from the Bulrush and swallowed him.

BURP! Good Snake!!

Another great day at Green Cay. We love it there. I just wish that the morons who use it as their personal workout racetrack would be more courteous and think of someone other than themselves.

If you think that it’s great to be able to shoot from a dry wooden boardwalk then you’ve never tried to shoot with a 600mm lens from the middle of an elephant stampede and all the elephants are all yelling at their cell phones as they tramp by.

Here is the slide show from Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com//photos/quakerville/sets/72157629192856567/show/