Pelicans in Formation

I saw these pelicans flying over
John D. MacArthur Park.

Lake Worth Heron

Such a graceful flier.

White Springs Pileated Woodpecker

This fella was high in a spruce pine. Peggy was right. This camera is definitely a keeper. It is more complicated but I am learning fast!

Kosmic Debriz

Here is my friend Mark. I traveled to White Springs to say hello and to do a tie dye workshop with him. The shirt I dyed is drying and I will have it ready to photograph in a few weeks. Mark and I like to talk and to be outdoors. I also saw Alice Gerrard while I was in WS. She sang so sweetly and she has been a big inspiration to me over the years. I'll see if I got any good photos of her and put them up. Today my son comes home for the Tahnksgiving holiday. The grocery bill will go up this week! I'm defrosting chicken as we speak!

An aside; it is the coldest November I can recall here in North Florida, but it's better than hurricanes!

A sign?

This morning the pileated woodpeckers were back.

On a Monday....

Kayaking The Sopchoppy River

On Saturday I took a lovely and surprisingly long trip down the Sopchoppy River with the Broderson Brothers. They grew up as river rats like me. Their parents owned a marina on the Chesapeake Bay and also retired on a Gulfstar in the keys.
Ward looks happy to be out on a Saturday and it was before the football game so he wasn't yet nonplussed! Ward and Rebecca host the Sunday MLC suppers. His wife was out of town so he was free to go with the carefree singles!

We saw this hornets nest and a couple of others on our way. The fall foliage reminded us of the northern fall season. The cedars were red and many oaks displayed fall plumage as well.
Peter bought this sweet little place on the upper Sopchoppy and he has begun work on it. It has an easy beach launch which just needs two large trees cleared, unlike many of the steep launches along this high banked river.
The upper Sopchoppy has some encumbrances which we managed to avoid as you see here, with only a little extra caution.
Here is Peter enjoying the view. I was able to keep up with the guys although we kept up a good pace on the lower part of the river since we didn't want to get to the city park past dark. I had been out six hours the day before and my arms are pretty strong at this point. I have also been lifting weights in the garage gym I set up recently. My arms are only a little sore today.....
This is Peter's lovely little place. He has a resident pileated woodpecker and we saw many woodpecker holes and stripped bark on the river.

More Wacissa Photos

Bob The Limpkin...but no Ivory Bills

This seemed like the perfect day for a Wacissa trip and as luck would have it my kayaking buddy was ready to go with me today. Peggy told me she had several sights for me to see and our first treat was the headwaters of the Wacissa which I had not ever explored. We discovered that with the right tools we could have taken out at least six air boats in one swoop but as we were plotting, gunshots began to ring out driving us downstream. Perhaps our voices carried...

Anyway, off we went downstream for what turned into a six hour trip. I can kill six hours on a river without ever feeling bored for even a second and today was no exception. I saw evidence of ivory bills stripping tree bark on a sweet gum here. Bob, the Tame Limpkin was holding court after a rather large meal of snails. The lily pads were littered with them and he was sated and posing languorously for me.

I like those reedy things that grow in the river in abundance in the fall and winter. Peggy was taking pictures and as usual has the most stunning ones. We saw an eagle, many mergansers, herons, ibises, and limpkins galore , those helicopter birds that dive into the river...I can never think of their name...(belted kingfishers). I saw at least one large woodpecker with a red tuft and another woodpecker of large size flew over the river and flashed white on his wings. He did not swoop. I heard many double knocks all day, especially along the upper river.

I seem to have a number of pictures of Peggy's back and here is one more....She claims she has a T-shirt that says, "Paddle faster, I hear banjo music" which I thought was pretty interesting but I just got the joke this minute as I thought of this conversational exchange.....LOL
Oh, I can't get anymore pictures to take so I'll put this one up in the next entry....

We tried to wake a sleeping raccoon high in a tree. I sang "horsey keep your tail up...." but I guess he was too high up to worry about any horse puckey...

As I was driving home, Kim called to invite me to see one of her grandsons and have dinner. Jay-Len is precious. Kim and I ended the evening playing bluegrass guitar(she plays lead, I play rhythm) and singing some of our old favorite Carter Family songs. I got to play Kim's old Gibson which was the perfect ending of a fine day...

Changing of the Watch

This weekend was another trip to visit the parental units! Dad was attending the Yacht Club Watch Change as the original past commodore. It was a ceremony with pomp, including a bagpiper, Navy Cadets in uniform, flags going up and down, The Star Spangled Banner, and speeches. Great fun for my parents and definitely a kodak moment. Are they PB blue hairs? I guess so... If you're familiar with Chaos Theory, they always remind me of a Lorenz Loop! They even dress as though they are a Loop! Don't you think? http://plus.maths.org/issue35/features/dartnell/index.html

As for me, I am like a moth evading an echolocating bat...I stopped at White Springs on the way home to visit but my intended visitee was not at home. I expect to go out camping for the weekend this coming weekend but as I have several potential destinations, I am not sure just where I will end up as yet. The forest awaits...

Of course, I will be kayaking and looking for the illusive ivory billed woodpecker. If you're wondering why this blog is bland, see me in person for my usual scorching opinions about politics, social behavior, the Bush Dynasty, other people's children, my girlfriend's husbands, other people's musical abilities, and anything else I regularly get myself in trouble over. Here, I try to stay out of trouble but this is the only place that happens....

Progeny, Sculpture and The River: A Sunday

I visited my progeny this past weekend in Pensacola. He had a birthday and we celebrated together. I did the mom things for him and we yelled at each other some and hung out. We saw this sculpture while out riding around in the van. I stopped at the Choctawhatchee for a look on the way home.
I had an interesting talk and walk with a conservation officer who knows all about the search team but of course, he couldn't tell me where they have been searching. But I am pretty certain I know the area. I'm going to camp there soon and do some hiking and kayaking.

Nathan let me camp on his floor, buy him some birthday presents, cook dinner for him, and clean his apartment. It was actually a lot of fun since I haven't done the mom thing for a while now. We got a great deal accomplished for his move back to Tallahassee and Flagler College.

More Dead Lakes Photos

Kayaking Dead Lakes

I awoke late this morning after a late night singing session Friday night at a neat house with a sky deck on the very top of it. I also had a medical procedure which came out okay I think and I was a bit worn out in the morning. The phone rang all morning which was nice but I didn't leave until one pm and I got in the game traffic. Yikes! that was a mistake. Anyway, I wanted to see some areas around the Chipola River. It is definitely woodpecker territory!

I reasoned that if ivory billed woodpeckers are by the Choctawhatchee, they might also be near the Chipola, which is only a score of miles further east. There are lots of tupelo, cypress, sweet gum and pines around this area, which was flooded by the Chipola Dam. So off I went to Dead Lakes which is about eighty miles from me, in Gulf county.

There were woodpecker holes everywhere I looked and I saw various birds, including white ibis, a red shouldered hawk, great blue herons, and otters. The otters were fun and we played hide and seek all along the bank near sundown. I heard many woodpecker sounds but I only heard a faint double knock once. The cypress and tupelo trees are everywhere and the shapes are intriguing. I think they filmed "Ulee's Gold" in Wewahitchka, which is down the road from the state park.

Today's Laugh

An elderly man in North Carolina had owned a large farm for several years. He had a large pond in the back, fixed up nice; picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some apple and peach trees. The pond was properly shaped and fixed up for swimming when it was built.

One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn't been there for a while, and look it over. He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit. As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer , he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond. He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end.

One of the women shouted to him, "We're not coming out until you leave!" The old man frowned and replied, "I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond naked." Holding the bucket up he said, "I'm here to feed the alligator." (joke brought to you by Bruce Murdoch)

Tilley Landing

Tilley Landing is a launch on the west side of the Choctawhatchee. It is s gravel road about two miles long that ends at a landing. The landing has a shelter and a portapotty. I think the canal goes out into an owbow lake but I was alone and it is remote so I did not go alone. Here are some photographs. The Auburn University search team says this area is a good one for searching. I did hear a double knock while sitting quietly at the landing and listening. I did not see any kind of woodpeckers. I heard woodpecker sounds all day actually, and another double knock on the River above Morrisons spring. I did not hear any calls.