Ok boys and girls…I know it’s been 2 weeks since the last post but we were out of town for a few days doing Fun Stuff© and now I got some updates and photos for ya.

Last Friday…well actually 2 Friday’s back since time flies when you’re having fun…we headed off to Titusville for a drive down Black Point Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island NWR to get some photos…then we stopped by the St. Augustine Alligator Farm since we had been told it was a good birding spot. Well…it wasn’t and that was a waste of $70 but we were on the way to Jacksonville anyway for a performance of the Saint Saèns Symphony 3 Organ which we’ve seen probably 50 times or more over the years all over the US and also beyond as Michael Barone from the NPR Radio Show Pipedreams would say. They headed home the next morning after Mass and got back midafternoon on Sunday. But I’ll get to all of that in a minute…let’s see what’s happening around the home front the past 2 weeks.

Connie’s choir at church performed a concert of Lenten Vespers…the director brought in a couple of professionals to augment and she got to sing both a solo as a soprano and also performed with the two professional singers as the mezzo soprano in a trio of soloists in a second piece. She was pretty darned good…not quite as good as the Soprano professional but then she’s really a true mezzo and not a soprano…so although she can get to the same high notes the true sopranos can her tone is slightly non bell like and more nuanced than a soprano…then there’s the 20 years of voice training she doesn’t have (she’s only got 4 or 5) and the “it’s their job so they better be better” thing to deal with. Neil took some videos of her performances and as soon as I can figger out how to get them up on his newfangled video enable WordPress site that hosts these ramblings Ima gonna put them up.

Neil continues to gather the last few things he needs for his trip to Tanzania…he leaves in 12 days and Connie will hold down the home front while he’s gone. He offered to take her but she said that she and lions don’t mix. He showed her a video on the platform formerly known as Twitter the other day of a lioness who just wanted a little love and jumped into the vehicle with the people. She didn’t eat them…so she either was curious or looking for some love I guess.
Here’s the link if you want to go and take a look at it. She’s going to Costa Rica with him over the summer…he’ll be in the woods taking photos and she’ll be fishing…but given her lack of interest in carnivores and death and the cost of going to Africa (you don’t want to know how much a 10 day trip over there costs with airfare, tips and all that) she said it wasn’t worth the expense for her. She’s happy with Costa Rica but turned down a trip to Glacier National Park a few weeks after Costa Rica for the same reason (although actually that’s a much cheaper trip and Neil sez the real problem is that the whole thing is up at 4,000 feet and there’s no air there…he’s willing to put up with breathing hard but she wasn’t. But…he did invite her to go along on both).

Then yesterday we had a Sarasota Symphony concert to attend so we were off to do that. After the concert…our original plan was to try eating at this chain named Twin Peaks…it’s a Hooter’s clone so you can guess what twin peaks they’re talking about…we usually eat at Longhorn up there after the concert as it’s near the freeway home but Twin Peaks is right across the road so we figured to try it and see if the food was good…it’s basically a sports bar with busty waitresses in skimpy but decently covered outfits…to have another option available. But then we realized it was St. Paddy’s Day and that the Hooters atmosphere sports bar would be a madhouse so we left that for next time and went to Longhorn which was pretty quiet…much more so than normal for a late Sunday afternoon. They had some wine, split a couple of appetizers and brought the leftover food home and had it with the leftover lamb roast he cooked on Saturday in the sous vide pot so it was tender and juicy and a wonderful medium rare. They had roasted potato wedges with it and he grilled a summer squash for her as well…then today it was the leftover veggies from Saturday, the lamb, more roasted garlic, and the leftover appetizer onion petals from yesterday.

And now you’re all caught up with doins’ down here. He’s gotta finish up their tax returns this week and send them off…all the paperwork is here and fortunately for him he can import all the buys and sales info from the various mutual funds their financial guys have them invested in rather than type in page after page of mind numbingly boring numbers. Import will save him at least 2 hours of typing and another 2 hours of the two of them verifying he typed in the right numbers.

Ok…back to our trip 2 weekends back. We stayed at our normal place in Titusville…the Extended Stay America…not because we need an extended stay but because the Durango Steak House is right across the parking lot. Since it was Friday in Lent…no meat for them so they had an order of fried calamari and then a couple bowls of she crab soup and then dessert before heading back to the room…long commute across the parking lot ya know. Early next morning it was off to Black Point with a stop at the Golden Arches for breakfast. They did the drive…which had some decent results…then since they had time they did the second drive down the beach road…and the only shots he got there were of the SpaceX launchpad where a rocket was scheduled to launch on Sunday…which it did. But no wildlife on the beach drive…he’s done it 3 times and gotten a couple of kingfisher shots and a couple of hawk shots so he’s not going to do that part again. Then they headed to St. Augustine for the aforementioned waste of money stop at the Alligator Farm…then battled their way through some sort of motorcycle festival traffic in downtown St. Augustine to get back to the freeway before arriving in mid afternoon at the Jacksonville Downtown Marriott…which is immediately across the street from the symphony hall where they had tickets. They rested a bit, then changed into decent clothes, had dinner at the J Bar downstairs in the hotel and about 1830 headed out to get to the symphony hall…unfortunately it had started raining like a mutha 15 minutes before they decided to head out. Luckily they had raincoats so they actually didn’t get very wet running 30 yards or so across the street…Connie wasn’t quite running but he’s rarely seen her move that fast in high heels. The symphony was wonderful…and it had mostly stopped raining by the time they headed back across the street and went into the J Bar for a nightcap…when in walked the composer of one of the pieces the orchestra has just performed…the world premier of the piece was the night before. It was her visual representations of the art collection of one of her friends…sort of like a modern day Pictures at an Exhibition if you’re familiar with that piece by Mussorgsky. We chatted with her for a few minutes before heading up to bed as we had gotten up at 0500 that morning and had an 0800 Mass 10 miles away to attend in the AM before heading home. The ride home was uneventful and he baked a pizza for her for dinner.

Here’s a picture of the organ…it’s a 6000something pipe one that used to be in a Baptist church someplace until it was torn down. The symphony hall bought it and paid for a 2 year restoration and then had it installed in the concert hall. We’ve heard the Organ Symphony with this orchestra and organ before back in 2010 or so but last time the conductor really held the organ back. The new guy…he’s pretty young…had a different idea…he thought that in a piece named the “Organ Symphony” that…well…the organ should be the star…and it was. It only plays in the 2nd and 4th movements…the second is almost always the slow romantic movement and in that one the organ plays mostly low notes…the kind you can feel vibrating your chest. Not too loud but quite nice. Then it becomes the star in the 4th movement…after the 3rd tails off into a quiet flute mostly ending the 4th starts with a massive C Major chord and the director and organist let her rip as they say. Quite an impressive finish…they went back across the street happy. The second picture is of the keyboard console…it sits right out on stage left. The pipe bank is the full width of what you can see from the display pipes and extends another 30 or so feet back for the remaining pipes. Please ignore the musicians warming up and walking across the stage…but you can’t take photos during the performance.

As you can see…the organist is facing away from the conductor who is out of frame to the right so she has a mirror strategically aligned to be able to see him.

Ok…on to photos from Black Point Drive and the few we got from the Alligator Farm at the end.

Little Blue Heron in breeding plumage…that’s the reddish neck and little spike feather on the back of his head.

Tricolor or Louisiana Heron.

This is about 1/4 of the largest (by several orders of magnitude) gathering of Snowy Egrets we’ve ever seen. It’s mating season…and apparently this canal is where all the males hang out to fight over the females. We saw a half dozen fights while we were there. There are a few Great Egrets mixed in but the vast majority of this gaggle is Snowy’s.

And a close up of one of the boys in his “attract the ladies” finery.

Our next spot was this Roseate Spoonbill.

Followed by this lone Snowy Egret with apparently something caught in its throat. It stood there for 5 minutes at least without ever moving or closing its bill.

Moving along…we spotted a whole group of Black Skimmers…so named because of their black head and the protruding red and black bill which they dip the lower half into the water to scoop up fish. One of the later shots actually has a catch. I left these deliberately as environmental shots rather than closeups because it was still pretty soon after sunrise and it was overcast so the light didn’t allow Neil a sufficiently high shutter speed to freeze the action as these are really quick birds…almost as quick as a Kingfisher except skimmers follow a more predictable trajectory so panning to keep them in the frame is easier. We haven’t had many opportunities to image this species in the past so between Neil and Connie they probably shot 400 frames…they add up quickly panning and shooting at 20 frames per second.

The other side of the road from the Skimmers we spotted a Reddish Egret but it was pretty far out and backlit so only one usable shot.

This is the SpaceX launchpad…the rocket scheduled for next day apparently hasn’t been erected yet as it sits on the far side of the pad.This and the remaining shots here were taken from the beach road drive.

Then in quick succession…a Red-Winged Blackbird, Tricolor Heron, Great Blue Heron, and another Red-Winged to finish off our drive. 

 Heading off to the waste of money Alligator Farm…the only shot really worth the money we spent was this Great Egret in breeding plumage…and it refused to turn around and show us something other than it’s back end.

We did get a shot of a *huge* crocodile as well as a couple of some of the Roseate Spoonbills. The problem was not a lack of birds…there were dozens to several hundred…the problem was that all of them were way up off the ground in tree based nests and there were just too many sticks, branches and what not to get decent photos.

This one was taking a bath I guess.

And with that…the photo portion of the trip was complete so we headed off to Jax as noted above.

Interesting things found on the net.

All cooks can understand this one.

I wonder which one he brought home?

What you get when you buy a cheap airline ticket.

And finally…

Cyas.