Honestly, going to some of these places in Florida is like cheating. Definitely the lowest-difficulty setting for the game of birding, anyway! :) Thanks for watching and the kind words!
Excellent thanks for that. Most of the species you saw and photographed are ones that we don't have in the UK so very interested to see this kind of stuff. Some excellent birds there. We do have Coots and the Osprey is a Summer visitor to the UK but there are very few breeding pairs and they are all protected - I've never actually seen an Osprey. Just looked up the Osprey numbers and there are now close to 300 breeding pairs in the UK during the Summer months but the majority of them are in Scotland. I would enjoy seeing all those Florida birds but definitely would not enjoy the heat 🙂
Ospreys are pretty amazing--they can really put on an aerial show when they're hovering over the water and waiting for a fish to dive on. Like I said, I definitely miss the Florida flora and fauna--the tropics are certainly great for that, any time of year. But the HEAT definitely got to be too much for me. Not even the heat per se, but just how much of the year down there has become unbearably hot and humid. I swear as a kid growing up there it wasn't that bad, and certainly not for as long. Anyway, now I have seasons and mountains, and the chance to revisit Florida a few times a year, and that's perfect. :)
Great video Kelly. We were going to try to stop here on our last trip to Florida but just ran out of time. We headed over to Crystal River to see the Manatees instead. What What was up with the flooded boardwalk at Congaree? Can't imagine that is a tidal issue being that far inland.
Yeah, you can't go wrong with manatees either, such cool creatures. I saw they set a couple new records at Blue Spring State Park this past winter! As for Congaree, I guess I just hit it after a bunch of rainy days. It's the Low Country of SC, so I guess that water has nowhere to go until it gets soaked up and/or evaporates. Still a neat park, but I would have loved to have been able to do the full boardwalk loop!
Yes indeed! We got about 83% coverage here, which was still pretty good. I briefly considered driving the 6 hours or so to get to the path of totality, but couldn't really make the timing work. And I considered making a video, but I can't claim to know much about what I'm doing when it comes to stuff like that. I did get some neat shots though, maybe I'll throw some into a future video as an aside. :)