Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Wildlife

A highlight of our trip to Florida was seeing so much wildlife, especially wildlife we don't have up here in the Midwest.

Every morning we sang from Psalm 104:

How many works Lord, in wisdom You've made;
How full on the earth Your riches displayed.
Out yonder the ocean how great and how wide,
Where small and great creatures unnumbered abide.

Then we went out to the beach to actually see these small and great creatures.

We were amazed at the variety of sea creatures, right down to the miniature jewel clams that dug their way into the sand after every wave.

The birds were so fun to watch!

Andrew spotted this red-headed woodpecker on a walk through town:
One night we even saw an alligator, swimming in the pond next to a large hotel. We left when it eyed David and started to come toward us.

Every morning a school of sting rays swam up and down the beach, in the very shallow water next to the shore.

Birds were everywhere:

And the pelicans were very noticeable. The way they can fly so close to the water, and then dive down and catch fish is just amazing!


On two occassions we saw dolphins swimming:


And these white birds were fun to watch and photograph:

We've left these creatures far behind and now we're back in the land of "Japaneetles" as David so aptly described the Japanses beetles yesterday.
We're off to the State Fair tonight -- one of the biggest highlights of the year for the children. I can't wait!! The weather is cool, and hopefully it will be a fun evening!

2 comments:

willow said...

Hello Heather, Lovely holiday photos, how lucky to see dolphins. We were hoping to catch a glimpse of either whales or dolphins in Shetland but no luck this time.

The evenings were drawing in while we were in Shetland but the sunset was still around 9:30, its about 8:30 at home now which is a bit earlier than you. I was looking at a website with sunset times and at the moment the daylight time is getting shorter by three minutes a day which seems a bit sad, I'm not ready for autumn yet!

Monica said...

Beautiful pictures! You should frame some of them to remember your time there. I've never seen stingrays so clearly in the ocean. Wow.