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Posted by Paul-the-other on 05:39:37 09/05/09
In Reply to: Re: A day in the park: part 2 posted by Paul-the-other
We traveled south to Flamingo escorted by many deer flies, horse flies and some other insects that I didn't recognize but which had the ability to fly up to 20 mph.
Flamingo was quiet, a few fishermen, one bored marina attendant, one catamaran. But the basin was filled with rolling tarpon. More tarpon then I have seen in one place in over 40 years. At any given moment there would be 25 on the surface.
A manatee surfaced in the middle of the tarpon.
Leaving the Flamingo area we progressed to the farm fields and found nothing but standing water and acres of mud. The afternoon thunderstorms were really building and the matinee was about to begin so we raced north on 217 to the last year location of tropical flycatcher and western kingbird. Nothing. So further north for a mile or two and we found a field being disked by three huge tractors in echlon formatin that were followed by an undulating wave of cattle and snowy egrets with some cowbirds and blacbids thrown in for good measure. For a video cam this would have been quite a shot.
A familiar call caught our attention and we looked up into the trees of a small hammock of sorts and saw three bald eagles. And what is better, they were calling to 7 more eagles in the field on the ground. Wow! Ten eagles.
The rain was still 2000 yards off so we shot several hundred pictures of the eagles. Within 20 minutes there was quite a crowd there watching the tractors, the avian camp followers and the eagles. A pleasant day in the park came to an end with lightning and torrential rain.
Ah, south Florida, you gotta love it. As we drove away we wondered the great eternal question: what happens when a rain drop traveling at terminal velocity hits a mosquito?
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