Monday Morning Mystery

Life on the bottoms - part 2

Great Southern White
Ascia monuste
... I think...
sipping frogfruit

(I forget) 8-}

Female Four-spotted Pennant
Brachymesia gravida

Short-billed Dowitchers
Limnodromus griseus

I wasn't terribly happy with (the quality of) these pics, but found them amusing enough to share. This Tricolored Heron (Egretta tricolor) did an amazing Reddish Egret impression.

Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)
singing for his supper on a cloudy evening.

Slender(?) Gaura
Gaura filipes

fit for a Queen
Danaus gilippus

think pink

I'm always tickled pink when the Roseate Spoonbills come back to our area. This beautiful creature was feeding furiously down at St Marks NWR the other day.

He tried his best to mind his own business and stayed out of the neighbourhood squabbles.

For the most part, he avoided trouble. But every now and then, he'd wander too close to the Black-necked Stilts' nesting zone and the stilt would leap-frog over him till he wandered out of the way. (I had stooped to shoot someething else and missed that action, DRAT!)

I waited and waited, but he didn't wander back into the stilt zone and never ventured closer than about 250-300 feet from my perch on the Stoney Bayou levee.

A bit further down the road, at Picnic Pond, a pod of pelicans paraded, pooling prowess, precisely pushing piscatorial prey pouchward...

The Pelican Brief:

• The American White Pelican is one of the largest boreal birds. They can weigh as much as 30 pounds and their wing spans can exceed nine feet.
• The bill can hold 3 gallons of water, and after the fish have been caught the bill is pointed downward allowing the water to drain, and then the bill is raised and the bird swallows.
• A group of pelicans has many collective nouns, including a "brief", "pod", "pouch", "scoop", and "squadron" of pelicans.

FIREPROOF

Mystery revealed

Florida Cracker guessed correctly... a crab trap.

Monday Morning Mystery

TAGGED

Now that I'm just about caught up after the ISP meltdown, I can finally get to SwampAngel's tag. (Check out her sharks' teeth, of which I am extremely jealous!) Here's the deal:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

I had to do a little eeny-meeny, coz I always have LOTS of books close at hand. Close zee eyes, twirl zee hand, pick zee book...

Page 123 has an illustration, so I fudged a bit. So, from Florida Cowman, A History of Florida Cattle Raising by Joe A. Akerman, Jr...

We looked like we had been cow-hunting for three weeks, and we smelled like the cowpens we had just left. I have forgotten the hotel's name, but it was very large and had nice marble floors. As we walked in, the bell boys came skating up to us and one tried to take Rudy's grip, a little handbag that would only hold a quart of whiskey and a forty-four pistol.

Now, if they're not too fast for me, I'll try and catch 5 people to tag... let's see how I do chasing after:
1 - Steve
2 - Meems
3 - Rob
4 - Brenda
5 - FC (OK, I tried to not tag you, but enquiring minds WANT to know) 8-}

And just in case there are any purists reading this... seeing as how I actually grabbed 2 books at once, here's a bonus excerpt from page 123 of the one that got away.

From The Florida Cookbook by Jeanne Voltz and Caroline Stuart:

Colonel Bradley insisted on decorous behavior by his patrons, but tolerated the high jinks that accompanied the introduction of green turtle soup to the menu. His Swiss chef, Conrad Schmitt, had live turtles on chains paraded through the clubhouse before they went to the soup pot.

C. W. Barron, founder of Barron's Weekly, esteemed the cuisine at Bradley's so highly that he arrived prepared, with tuxedos in five sizes.