Yep…Ima takin’ a short break from posting images from Africa…it will just be a one post break though. We’re about halfway through the trip and I think the next couple of Africa posts will have some of the best shots outside of the last full day’s post…but I digress. 

Last week Neil and Connie headed off on Thursday for the Florida State Elks Convention…it’s always at the Rosen Center in Orlando…there are a couple of Ladies of Elks meetings she goes to and she’s the Chaplain this year so she has to do a couple of prayers at lunch and the meetings. Neil takes the opportunity since they’re up in the central Florida area to visit some birding places up there. May is generally not the best time for birds…it’s past breeding season so no mating plumage or babies but he figures that a morning out taking pictures is a heck of a lot better than sleeping in in the hotel room.

They drove up Thursday and…while they usually avoid I-4 like the plague is traffic is almost invariably terrible with all of the parks (Disney, Universal, and Sea World) clustered together right off of the freeway…it turned out when they got up to Haines City that it was pretty clear and it is a faster route than the state/county roads they usually take so they rolled the dice and made it to the Rosen Center with just a couple of slowdowns. Once they arrived and checked in…they split up the luggage into piles that could be carried by each of them…she headed upstairs and he went and parked the car and carried his half in. They had a short rest period in the room before heading down to the best part of any Elks meeting…the Hospitality Rooms with their attendant Happy Hour food and adult beverages. They never stay too late because as you know they’re not real partiers and had plans to get up at 0500 the next morning anyway. 

After a decent night’s sleep albeit it on a queen instead of king bed so they had to snuggle a bit closer than normal…they were up and he headed down to the lobby to Redd’s to get coffee…they had some pastries for breakfast they bought at Publix on the way up. He then headed off to the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive…it’s only open Friday through Sunday starting at 0700…that was his choice for this trip as they did Black Point Wildlife Drive earlier in the spring while they were on the way to Jacksonville for a Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony concert as you may recall. She headed off to her meetings about 0800.

She went to the luncheon and he had a Cuban Slider and brew at Harry’s Poolside bar…then they met back at the room for a short rest followed by an hour or so down at the pool…it was brutally hot and humid and an hour was all they could stand. After a shower…they headed off to…you guessed it…the Hospitality Rooms for dinner followed by again going back upstairs relatively early. 

Saturday she headed off to her last meeting and he packed, checked out, and waited for her downstairs in the lobby area. After her meeting they started home after checking the traffic on I-4 and as expected going on 1130 the freeway was jammed so they took their usual back way home down through Haines City. On arrival…they got unpacked and…since Neil thought ahead the other day…he had some leftover vodka cream sauce for pasta. He mixed that with a cut up Italian sausage and some pasta, tossed some cheese on top, opened a bottle of Merlot and called it dinner. And he even made enough for dinner to day as well.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day…when we celebrate and honor the military men and women who’ve died in service to the country. It’s also traditionally a picnic/bbq day and he’s doing some marinated pork chops that he’ll grill, he’ll serve it with either roasted potatoes or rice/black beans and some grilled peach halves.

A couple of “yeah, they’re that stupid” things in the news.

A week or so back there was a vote down at a Mercedes Benz plant in Alabama and the UAW lost when 56% of the workers voted against unionizing. Most of the No votes came from the fact that Alabama is a mostly conservative state and workers didn’t want to pay money that the UAW would spend on progressive and liberal candidates. Despite the loss…the UAW has petitioned the NLRB to have a revote because “the company engaged in a relentless anti-union campaign”. The union thinks that the company being against unionizing and telling the workers that fact and emphasizing that the union will spend their dues on the union’s political objectives is a…their words…unfair labor practice. Apparently…the union thinks they should be free to tell workers all of the potential gains of unionization but thinks the company pointing out the drawbacks is unfair. Nuts.

I keep seeing all sorts of complaints…from one sides…about how Mr. Trump’s trials are simply a search for justice while claiming that trials they don’t like…for instance the classified material one down in Florida and the Hunter Biden tax and gun violation trials are political witch-hunts…while all the while the other side is claiming just about the opposite. News flash…it matters not whether either of them actually did what they’re accused of or not…of course their political opponents are going to take advantage and try to make political hay out of them. In other news…water is wet, the sun comes up in the east, and it gets colder in the winter.

And the latest claim from the left is…I kid you not…that if Mr. Trump wins the election in November he will “refuse to leave office at the end of his term in 2028”. Nuts…the Constitution clearly says that he cannot seek another term if he wins this time and that his term will expire on Jan 20, 2029. He can “refuse to leave office” until the cows come home but his successor will be sworn in and the moving vans will take his stuff away so his successor will move in. No claim by him that he’s entitled to another term or that he will refuse to leave office has any bearing whatsoever on what will actually happen…but again…see my above about making political hay out of it. 

OK…let’s have a few images from his at Lake Apopka…although the wildlife drive isn’t really on the lake much but rather in the diked area just north and east of the main body of the lake…it’s a 9 mile one way road across the dikes and is usually excellent viewing for the first half or so but less good in the second half…partially because by the time you get there the golden hour is past and the light isn’t as nice and partially because there are just fewer birds up there as it’s up in an area with a lot of agricultural fields rather than marsh and canals.

Sunrise looking toward the east and an Anhinga.

Red Winged Blackbird.

Moorhen…this species is characterized by really large feet that allow them to walk on top of a lot of the floating negation.

And pulling up some breakfast.

Great Blue Heron stalking breakfast as well.

Male Anhinga…they dive to hunt and spend a lot of time sitting on branches with their wings spread to dry them out.

Another Red Winged Blackbird…far and away the most common species he sighted but most of them were in lousy backlight, down in the bushes, or flew away before he could photograph them.

He spotted a Green Heron and right next to it a group of Black Crowned Night Herons. He used primarily his 600PF and 400 prime lenses but shot the Night Herons with his new 180-600 as well…it’s a more flexible lens that he’ll be taking to Costa Rica along with his 600Pf later on in the summer and wanted to check it’s performance out. He can’t really see any difference in the shots from the $5,000 600PF and the $1800 zoom…that’s good. When really zoomed in using his Lightroom processing program…one can see some minute differences but once the shots are downsampled to screen output resolution physics simply merges away those minor differences. It was also his first outing with his second Z8 body that he replaced the heavier Z9 with.

Great Egret in flight with backlit conditions and excellent light coming through the wing feathers. Once again…20 frames per second let him pick the optimum shot from this fly by.

Another Green Heron…first hunting then after a catch then an extreme crop to let you see his breakfast.

He never did figure out what the species of this bird was.

Boat Tailed Grackle…you’ll never guess why it got that name.

Dragonfly…and no, he’s got no idea which of the thousands of species of them this is…and doesn’t really care anyway. It’s a bug.

Once past the Green…he was headed north into the less favorable area of the drive…but he did spot an Osprey also having breakfast.

As well as this Green Heron across one of the canals.

Once he exited the drive…he stopped by the Navy Federal Credit Union branch up in Orlando for some banking business (there are no branches down where we live, the closest one is in Tampa) before heading back to the hotel for lunch.

We’ll be back to African wildlife next post…

Cyas.