April 15, 2012 - Florida Photos

During the time we were in Florida this winter, I made several trips into the Apalachicola National Forest. On one of those trips, I was able to photograph this Pileated Woodpecker near the small town of Sumatra. Males and females look very much alike but the male has a red stripe running from the bill to the neck and the female has a black stripe. So this is a female.

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Outside the office of Collins’ Vacation Rentals on St. George Island is a Hibiscus bush covered with beautiful red blossoms. To a Minnesotan like me, seeing a blooming bush outside in the winter months is a real treat.

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One day, during our time on St. George Island, we found hundreds of these Portuguese man-o-war washed up on the beach right in front of our rental house. When alive, they float on top of the ocean with lots of stinging tentacles hanging down in the water. The tentacles can be as long as 150 ft. In this picture, most of the tentacles are bunched together in the sand but you can see one of them stretched out toward the upper right of the photo.

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The biggest Portuguese man-o-war that we saw was about 6 inches across. Most were 3 or 4 inches but some were tiny like these. We were aware that the tentacles can still sting you even if the animal is dead so we were content to look at them and take photos.

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St. George Island has a large state park which we like to visit. On one of our walks along the beach we found a Cannonball Jellyfish. The top part really is round like a cannonball but that’s hard to tell because this one is half buried in the sand. Apparently they can get as large as 10 inches in diameter; this one was about 8 inches across. According to Wikipedia, these jellyfish are found from New England to Brazil and are especially common along the southeastern coast of the United States and the Gulf Coast. One of the main predators of the Cannonball Jellyfish is the Leatherback Sea Turtle.

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One of the bird species that winters on the Gulf Coast is the Horned Grebe. Its winter plumage is pretty dull, just gray and white. But it does have an interesting red eye and a red line from the eye to the bill. Click on the link below to see the dramatic difference when it changes to breeding plumage. Note that the red eye and red line are consistent in both plumages. http://www.earlorfphotos.com/Birds/Birds-2/5687792_WtJw7j#!i=350664136&k=U5QAG

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