We have so many interesting types of wildlife, and especially birds here in Florida. But when you live here, it’s easy to start taking them for granted. I find myself sometimes looking at other people’s work and thinking I wished I lived somewhere cool like that. Then I realize that I actually do. How many people get to live right next to a state park with species like gopher tortoises, that are found no place else in the world, living in their backyard? That was one of the topics of conversation while I was spending time with my brother and his girlfriend. They’re from Alaska, another place with wonderfully unique wildlife, and they’ve had similar feelings at times.

Another thing that we all agreed on was that it was great fun watching the flock of snowy egrets (Egretta thula) that we found fishing on a creek in Payne’s Prairie. There were quite a few of them lining the bank fishing, and during the time we watched them there were very few misses so there seemed to be plenty of fish. The entire time, though, a number of them scuffled on and off. One bird in particular that looked to be the largest, spent most of its time pestering the others. Every once in a while it would grab a fish and then it would go right back to patrolling. In this shot I was trying to catch the bird just as it started to swallow the fish, but as you see, I was a fraction of a second too late. I did think it was cool how you could see the outline of the fish as it started heading down the throat though. Various types of egrets and herons fishing are commonplace around here, but I do realize that for many people, watching something like this would be quite unique and would require a lot more travel than the half hour drive that I had.