One of my favorite birds in southwest Florida is the common gallinule (Gallinula galeata) with its delightful red beak. In the everglades it was always tricky to capture because it was invariably hiding behind grasses and mangroves. But always worth the effort! The photograph of Figure 1 was taken in Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island. I personally love the greys of the water, the vertical branches, the reflections, whose symmetry directs the eye to the subject, and the circular ripples, which has a similar effect.

Like Ozymandias* the haughty eagle chooses his perch high above the meager trees that hold the nests of the osprey. Bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) carries with him so much symbolism. And they are often, like the one of Figure 1, so difficult to photograph. I was just beneath its tree, but really it was so far away and challenged my lens’ ability to capture him. “Capture” is the right word. The eagle is so hard to “capture” both physically and figuratively. Had we chosen the osprey instead as the emblem of America, might we have become a nation of pescatarians?

While Benjamin Franklin did not, as often cited, suggest that the turkey be the proper national bird. Perhaps it seems more appropriate in these troubled times, when we cannot find it in ourselves to come to aid of our allies. Franklin did comment in a letter to his daughter that the eagle in the national seal resembled a turkey. Franklin did apparently comment that “Bald Eagle…is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly…[he] is too lazy to fish for himself.” Like, I guess, the noble osprey. Neither agreeing or disagreeing with Franklin and having a strong disdain for the anthropomorphic, I just put it out there as a measure of a time when America was purer.

I took the image on a road side on Sanibel Island. TC and I pulled over and took photographs. The bird in question was himself haughty and disdainful. He barely looked at me and allowed me only so much time to take his image and, certainly not, to capture him before flying off.

*My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Percy Bysshe Shelly, Ozymandias

This is a usual time of year for post-winter flooding in New England, a kind of mud season. And, as I indicated yesterday, there’s a lot of flooding this year. I wanted to try and capture it in a photograph – the inundated trees, a deep chocolatey still water surface, thick with rich mud. Often, as in Figure 1 the key is the contorted abstract shapes and, of course, the reflections. What particularly caught my eye was the spiral pattern in the park and its inverted reflection in the water as well as the disconcerting contrast between the cylindrical symmetry of the log and the vertical linear reflections of the standing trees.

Well, it is officially spring, judging by the warmth of the air. The birds are putting on their best plumage for the mating season, and I am hitting the birding trail. So, Figure 1 is just a warm-up image that I took at the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge this afternoon. After all the rain that we had these past few weeks the amount of flooding is insane and many of the paths and trails are impassable. This American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) was displaying some brilliant color. The redwings are similalrly spectacular and their mating calls fill every corner of the meadow. I cannot wait for the coming of the lotuses!

One of the most wonderful animals on Lovers Key are the Osprey (Pandion haliaetus). Everywhere that I have seen them osprey are truly magnificent. Here they are very accessible. They nest right along the beech, and you can see them up close: mating, brooding and eating. I took a short video of one devouring a fish in a tree, while desperate laughing gulls gathered and squawked beneath it.

You suddenly have the understanding that just as we see them as others at the end of horizon of comprehension; so they must view us. We are a distraction.

At Lovers Key they talk a lot to each other. And they have a birdlike call that doesn’t quite seem to belong to a big top of the food chain predator. In Figure 1, I have tried to capture that endless conversation. Here an osprey sitting on its nest calls out its presence to the others around it. Perhaps it speaks to the timelessness. Perhaps it is saying to us to get off my beach. Perhaps it is protesting the end of the endless.

Following on yesterday’s blog about the solar eclipse, I thought I would post the image of Figure 1, which I took on Lovers Key in Fort Myers, Florida. The theme is a fisherman in a very intense sunlight; so intense that the image is driven into silhouette. Every once in a while I like to do a silhouette. It is curious. I like to think of silhouettes as simplifying. Indeed, usually that is what I am trying for. Here nothing is farther from the truth. The intense and high contrast light reveals rather than erases the debris on the beach. It is a jigsaw puzzle of complexity

There was a little girl on the tour in the Everglades with us, who when asked what she most wanted to see, it was manatees first and alligators second. Sadly we saw no manatees. It was too early in the season. But, alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) are kind of the quintessential Florida wildlife experience. They only disappointed in their size and number. Most that I saw were five or six feet long – no mighty behemoths – and there really weren’t that many of them either.

Never-the-less, in terms of antediluvian and prehistoric terror they really don’t disappoint. While you mostly see them lying about in the sun, you immediately recognize there ability to eat whatever they want. As I said, they are basically a giant muscle with teeth. And you really cannot resist anthropomorphizing them into something sinister and evil, which, of course, they are not. Just stay out of the water.

I took several alligator photographs in Florida on this trip. I chose this one because it shows the beast lurking in among the swamp weeds. It reminds me of the movie Jurassic Park and it seems to speak of an earlier age of reptiles, where you might find a velociraptor or T-Rex hunting, and then you realize that you are dinner, especially if you’re a lawyer.