Birds and Other Nature Sightings

      My wife and I had a late flight out of Orlando, so I wanted to use part of the day to visit Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive.  My wife, bless her, indulges me.  Wildlife drive is about an hour drive from Orlando International Airport.  Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive is very similar to Brigantine Wildlife Drive in Atlantic County, NJ.  Both are one way auto loops stretching between eight and 11 miles long through local, natural habitat.  Bird lists for both locations are well over 300 species.  However, the Florida site is only open to vehicles from Friday to Sunday.  Last August I visited the drive mid-week and the only access was on foot or bicycle.  I walked about 7 miles that day in the Florida sun with practically no areas to seek shade.  The upside was there were no mosquitoes or greenhead flies like the New Jersey site.  This would be my only chance in the near future to enjoy the drive from a car. When we ente...

      Since this blog is new, I will occasionally look back at previous adventures and share some of those highlights here.  My first flashback is from August 2021 that featured a new life bird and an interesting wildlife encounter.   My wife, oldest daughter and I went to Florida to visit family in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, during which we took a side trip to Disney World for a couple of days.  One of those days, my wife and daughter set out for a magical day at one of the theme parks while I took the car to Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive.  Wildlife drive is a central Florida hotspot about 25 miles from Disney that hosts nearly 300 known bird species.  It is basically a nine-plus mile drive through central Florida marshes and wetlands.  I had two targeted birds I wanted to find there that I likely wasn’t going to see in New Jersey:  fulvous whistling-duck and purple gallinule.  The only purple gallinule I had seen was the pre...