Crops & Clips-- flashback to December 2018

We will celebrate this December, our final month living in Florida by looking three years back, through the 441 photos I processed in December, 2018. I hope to find images which depict favorite memes: critters of all kinds, especially birds, flowers, butterflies, beautiful skies, reflections...  and scenes which speak for themselves.

Great Egret before sunrise on December 3:

The same bird in full sunlight:

One of my first images of the month was of this Gray-headed Swamphen, demonstrating its use of prehensile toes to pluck and eat the tender shoots of Spikerush:

Little Blue Heron:

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron:

A male Palm Warbler in early morning light:

Yellow-throated Warbler:

Common Grackle:

Northern Mockingbird on Brazilian Pepper:

Blue-headed Vireo:

Female Ruby-throated Hummingbird:

Flowers and fruit of Firebush (Hamelia patens), favored by hummingbirds, butterflies and warblers:

Prairie Warbler:

Male Northern Cardinal:

Female Bald Eagle (Jewel) flying with Tree Swallows:

Immature Red-shouldered Hawk:

Composite view of a female Bobcat sprinting:

Gulf Fritillary:

Tiny flower:

Light fog before Sunrise:

Sun rising over Sunset Lakes:

Our entrance gate all decorated for Christmas:

Rosyfinch Ramblings will be dormant for a while as we are relocating from Florida to Connecticut. Although we both are natives of New Jersey and learned to live with four seasons, this is probably the worst time of year to migrate north. For eighteen years we have not "molted" out of t-shirts, shorts and sandals. As I write this, snow is falling and the wind is howling at our upcoming destination. Hope to be back and enjoying entirely new flora and fauna despite cold noses and toes-es.

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Linking to:

Garden Affair

Nature Thursday

Skywatch Friday

Weekend Reflections

Saturday's Critters

BirdD'Pot

Camera Critters

All Seasons

Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday)

Natasha Musing

Our World Tuesday

Wild Bird Wednesday

My Corner of the World

Timeless Thursday

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Please visit the links to all these posts to see some excellent photos on display
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Early morning sightings

Sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic interrupts the familiar routines which formerly made each day of the week special. Now the days flow, one into another. There are no "weekends," no choir practices or church gatherings, all the parks are closed. Grocery orders and even routine doctors' appointments are handled on computers and iPads. The highlight of most mornings is our walk into and around our local wetlands preserve. Here is a random sample of our encounters...

Blue-headed Vireo:



Male Common Yellowthroat:



Gray Catbird:



Red-bellied Woodpecker:



Prairie Warbler:



An energetic Northern Parula warbler:





Iridescent neck feathers are highlights on this Mourning Dove:



A Red-winged Blackbird sings next to a cattail patch:



A Ruby-throated Hummingbird is about to fly north:



A White-tailed Doe graces the morning scene:



Fog lifts along the shore of the placid lake:



Very early one morning we were surprised when two Eastern Screech-Owls began calling along the path. One perched on a signpost for flash photos (I darkened its pupils in these two photos):





The second owl landed on the ground and my flashlight produced a "red eye" in this poor photo.  As with all owls, their pupils react independently of each other.  



Owls have the uncanny ability to rotate their heads 360 degrees in an instant. The slow exposure created this funny "bottle owl:"



Florida normally has a dry season which lasts from late October into early May. This winter we experienced near-drought conditions. Water levels in our local wetlands had been unusually high almost all year around for the prior three years. High water dilutes aquatic prey and wading birds must range far and wide to find food. Trails which we have explored in the past had been flooded and inaccessible.   

Low water now allows me to walk some of the trails created by ATV riders out in the local Wounded Wetlands. I call this one the North Lakeshore Trail. It provides a unique view of a sunrise which softens the ugly scars left by the off-road vehicles  :



A few minutes later, the sun climbs into the open sky:



The low water reveals a labyrinth of ATV tracks through the woodlands, previously out of sight:

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Linking to:

Skywatch Friday

Weekend Reflections

Saturday's Critters

BirdD'Pot

Camera Critters

All Seasons

Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday)

Our World Tuesday

Wild Bird Wednesday

My Corner of the World

________________________________________________

Please visit the links to all these posts to see some excellent photos on display
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Crops & Clips: This week's clicks

A Muscovy Duck emerged from the dense Cocoplum shrub in our back yard and presented us with her 14 newly hatched ducklings:

  



She led them into the water for their first swim:



They clustered around her:



Sadly, it is very likely that the ducklings' numbers will quickly be reduced by predation from Largemouth and Peacock Bass, turtles,  herons, hawks, Raccoons and feral cats. They may even be killed by rival male Muscovy Ducks, as I witnessed and reported other instances in this blog, Purposeful Infanticide: Birds killing babies

Our back yard West Indies Mahogany tree has hosted Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers for several winters. We are concerned about the damage they may do and shoo them away as soon as we see them. They fly off, or sometimes just hide on the opposite side of the trunk or in the upper branches. As soon as we go back into the house they are busy drilling their wells and sipping the sap.

Usually we see immature sapsuckers, but this winter an adult female has dominated the tree. She occasionally allows a younger bird to work in her presence. 

Female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker:



Hundreds of sap wells, many freshly drilled, cover the trunk and all the main branches of the tree: 



A male Ruby-throated Hummingbird has succeeded in taking over our back yard feeder. Females have defended it every winter, until a few weeks ago when this male appeared:







Another back yard visitor, a Great Egret (shot through the window):



Out in the Wounded Wetlands, the large male Bobcat appeared along the trail on February 13, emerging from the brush not very far ahead of me. I almost did not see him in the deep shade, about an hour after sunrise:





He saw me but seemed rather indifferent as he walked across in front of me, the sun behind him. Obtaining a proper exposure was difficult, so the quality of these photos suffered:



Unflappable, he looked back at me one last time before disappearing on the other side of the track:



A Loggerhead Shrike stared me down:



At the lake, an Anhinga dried its wings:



An American Kestrel kept  watch from high on a Royal Palm spire:



A pair of Mottled Ducks cast reflections on the quiet surface of the lake:



Northern Flickers put on an amazing show. The female called repeatedly from a Royal Palm spire:



She flew to a tree very close to me and a male joined her, so close that I could not fit all the action into my viewfinder. Typically, the female displays while the male (or sometimes two or three) dance about like fencers. They parry as if there is an invisible sword extending from their bills, usually not coming into physical contact, but darting and swaying, advancing and retreating. 

This is tail of the female:



Here she dives down, allowing me one of my few full-body photos:



This was my only (almost) unobstructed view of the male flicker:



A White Ibis probed the earth for worms and insects along the trail:



At Chapel Trail Nature Preserve in nearby Pembroke Pines, two female Painted Buntings appeared:





At Chapel Trail there were nearly a dozen exotic Gray-headed Swamphens, pulling up the Spike-rush to eat their tender roots and shoots:





About 15 years ago, over 3,000 of these invasive swamphens were gunned down because they were reported to kill the young of native birds and also destroy the Spike-rush, a cornerstone species in the wet prairies of the Everglades. I fear that a similar native species may have been easily confused with the dreaded swamphen. Indeed, I found far fewer Purple Gallinules after the extermination campaign. Were they an unintended "by-catch?"

This sub-adult Purple Gallinule, grazing on lotus flowers, has a pale beak. An adult's beak will be bright red with a yellow tip. It is about half the size of a swamphen:



Back on our local wetlands, other critters deserved attention. This is a Horace's Duskywing, on an Ixora flower:



One of the few Monarch butterflies I've seen so far this winter. It may be a member of the local non-migratory population:



I had to kneel down to photograph two tiny butterflies-- Ceraunus Blue...





...and Fiery Skipper:



The view before sunrise, looking back to the east:



Fog lifting over the Pine Bank:



On the morning of February 18, the Snow Moon eclipsed (occluded) the Red Planet Mars. I actually  was unaware of the event, although I noticed a bright heavenly body very close by, the white dot in the lower left of this photo, hand-held (click on photo to enlarge). My Canon 80D has remarkable image stability-- see EXIF* below. The round dot even contained a few red pixels:



*EXIF for Moon and Mars image:

Camera Model Canon EOS 80D
Shooting Date/Time 2/18/2020 6:05:49 AM (50 minutes before sunrise)
Tv (Shutter Speed) 1/250
Av (Aperture Value) 8.0
Exposure Compensation -1
ISO Speed 6400
Lens EF300mm f/4L IS USM +1.4x
Focal Length 420.0mm


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Linking to :

Fences Around the World


Skywatch Friday

Weekend Reflections

Saturday's Critters

BirdD'Pot

Camera Critters

All Seasons

Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday)

Our World Tuesday

Wild Bird Wednesday

My Corner of the World