Ummh! Maybe that didn’t come out right! I mean - come on a hike with me. Other parts of the Park to visit and it was a beautiful, though grueling hot day. The air near the ground was flimmering - you could see the heat rising from it. After checking on my little pier( It’s a good gauge on what’s going on in terms of wildlife) and seeing that the Gators are back, the Osprey really moved in it’s nest and Dragonflies starting to really buzz around I made my way to the sandhills. Bad move, one might think and the increasing heat did not really make it a “walk in the Park”. Pun intended. But I was rewarded, I got my first Brown Thrasher and was surprised on both his beauty and size. He was very vocal and sent of some klicking sound to warn his young, but was surprisingly cooperative. I could get fairly close and only had to fight lots of twigs in the field of view and pretty bad shadows. But it worked out. Right after that I intended to check on a field of Lantana which blooms on and of during the year and is, when in bloom always a surefire bet for butterflies. A month ago it was all dried up - but now after all the rain we got Lantana is back in “bidness” - so were the butterflies. I saw Palamedes Swallowtail, Black Swallowtail , Zebra Swallowtail , Gulf Fritillary , Zebra Longwing ,  Spicebush Swallowtail , Common Buckeye , Queen and - from afar a Eastern Tiger Swallowtail . But before I got to start shooting I almost ran into a young White-tailed Deer Buck, who was serving himself wild oranges and was so completely smitten with his meal, that I didn’t seem to be the usual nuisance and he opted to ignore me for the time being. So I approached very slowly and silent, and though he occasionaly threw a glimpse in my direction, he had better things to do - e.g. slurping the orange, he had found. And only when finished he slowly drifted off into the shadows of the nearby woods, meeting up with two others. I suspect these three were the same “crowd” I encountered on my last visit. Seeing that the photographic option were pretty much zilch in the woods, I opted to look at the Swallowtail menagerie. By far not as brimming with traffic as in Peak times, it was however considerable more going on as on my last visits. At that time I was already “swimming” in my clothes (5 hours had passed since my arrival) and the sun was smack above me and seemed to increase her power. Time for me to go. And - while leaving the park I actually spotted a Swallowtail Kite flying very low and close by before disapaering in the woods. No chance to get a shot though (Hands on the steering wheel and all…) A good day - hope you enjoyed taking a walk!

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