Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     My wife and I took my daughter for a long weekend to Disney as part of her 30th birthday celebration.  She has never outgrown the Disney experience since her first trip when she was four years old.  I don’t mind the trip there either.  I like the resort we stay at, and Florida is always good for birding and other nature sightings.  As a matter of fact, I could produce a nice list of wildlife sightings over the years for Disney property alone.  The only problem for this trip was that it was hot.  We knew at the beginning of the booking process that it would be hot in central Florida in June, but this time it was oppressive.  We dealt with it because it just happened to be equally as hot back at home too.   I did incidental birding for three of the four days while I was with the family.  I had one day to myself, and that is when I ventured over to nearby Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive.  Over the four days I did not pick up ...

     I got to spend Father’s Day tuna fishing on my friend’s boat.  I like tuna trips because they combine two of my favorite activities, fishing and pelagic birding.  Usually, to get these sleek, powerful fish we have to get out to one of the canyon fishing grounds and start before daybreak.  At the shelf where the ocean floor drops from a couple hundred feet to a couple thousand feet deep, the water temperature also rises.  That is where many pelagic game fish gather, as well as birds and other sea life.  We spent most of the day trolling for tuna.  We scored two yellowfin tuna, and saw a good sample of marine life. The bird life was slower than I expected.  The morning hours produced only Wilson’s storm-petrels and some great shearwaters .  I really was hoping to spot Leach’s or band-rumped storm-petrels , jaegers or even a black-capped petrel , but none were around.  Chumming might have helped bring in some of those bird...