This morning I got acquainted with a great blue heron at the Anhinga Trail near the entrance to the park. It’s a popular spot for photographers and bird watchers, even on this cold morning. I think there was a hint of frost on my windshield this morning.

I spent quite a while watching this this bird as he did his morning fishing, he caught a fish, but then laid it in the sawgrass next to him and continued fishing. I’m Not sure why he didn’t eat it right away, because there were all kinds of vultures waiting for the great blue heron to let his guard down and try to steal the fish. The Anhinga Trail has quite a population of vultures who have learned that there is some easy to come by fresh fish at the Anhinga Trail.  I guess you can say the vulture  is kind of the jerk of the bird world. I was rooting for the heron, when I left the heron still had his catch, but hadn’t eaten it either.

Here’s his catch, but Mr. Heron, next time please whipe off all that grass! It really messed up my photo.

Here is one of the vultures waiting to steal the heron’s meal. I thought this composition and his posed made him look a bit sinister.

This one is another great blue heron at sunset on the Anhinga Trail on the way home tonight. It’s one of those photos that is either cool or completely stupid. I haven’t made up my mind on that yet. At the moment I leaning towards liking it.

I finally got my feet wet! I’ve gotten settled in the house, ran a lot of errands, done some driving around and scouting, a short canoe trip to test a new paddle and a little shooting thrown in here and there. But nature photography is a lot like fishing, you don’t get great stuff every day you go out. But here’s one I kind of like from today. I’m not entirely sure yet, maybe I like it because I stood in pretty cold water for about an hour hoping some clouds would come my way.

This dwarf cypress jumped out at me. I’ve seen trees grow like this a few other times in the Everglades and recently in Wisconsin. I’ll have to ask a ranger for an explanation.

I  lived in South Florida for six years, so I know the annual January influx of the snowbirds well, but yesterday I unwittingly experienced the migration first hand on I-75. Like everyone else who comes to Florida in the winter I waited till after the holidays and started driving down in early January. There I was on Interstate midway down the peninsula in stop and go traffic at times. The rest stops had cars backed up onto the off-ramp waiting for a parking spot and I had to stand in lines to use the facilities. It was hard to believe I was in the middle of nowhere in a long traffic jams with other salt stained cars with licenses plates from New York, Ohio and Minnesota.

In winter months Florida bursts at the seams with people in search of warm sunny weather, packing restaurants and creating non stop traffic jams and using a lot of water. All during the dry winter season when very little rain falls to replenish the aquifers that provides this water.  South Florida’s water supply is where I’m sitting right now, the Everglades. That traffic I was in today really illustrates the wintertime demand put on the water of the Everglades.

A big reason for my passion for the Everglades is this place is literally a “canary in a coalmine” situation for climate change. If even the most modest global warming predictions come true, sea levels will rise and reshape this beautiful park. A large portion of the park and many places I will be photographing may disappear into the Gulf of Mexico.

The other night I was watching the anti global warming pundits on TV claiming this is all one big hoax being committed by the science community. It inspired me to write this letter to the editor that was published in today’s Wisconsin State Journal…

Wisconsin State Journal- December 23rd

While out on the 11 day trip on the wilderness waterway, there is pretty much no civilization at all, including no cell signal. My only way of staying in touch will be what’s called a Spot Messenger. It’s a nifty little GPS that sends your coordinates via satellite displayed on Google maps to an email address with a pre-written “I’m okay” message. So Nazan will hear from me once a day when I make camp and know where I’m at. Nazan will post that map link on my facebook page so everyone can follow along with on my trip.

The messenger is a cool toy, but it also has a “911” button as well, so If I’m in trouble I can press the panic button and it sends my coordinates to the proper authorities to let them know I’m in need of rescue. In the Everglades I imagine that would be the Coast Guard or Park Service. So it also gives me a bit more piece of mind on a solo trip crossing the largest wilderness east of the Mississippi.

But the okay messages won’t always necessarily come through. It’s little hand held thing that is sending a message to space and back, so it’s not 100% reliable and has a poor signal if there is much tree cover where I’m at. There are also many other reasons it may not work, like I dropped it in the water, ran out of batteries or simply forgot to send the message that day. So I should stress that if there are no okay messages every day does not mean it’s time to panic. But it should be a fun way to follow along with where I’m at.

Click here for a test transmission I did in our yard in Madison…