The random pictures of evilmike

That's what he said. Twenty years ago would be about 1981, I don't know what your crazy attempt to make me feel old by insisting that was 40 years ago is about but it hasn't worked.
Hey, I don't know when everyone hears stuff. Wasn't attempting to make you feel old, Vanna White is 65, heck I don't even think I'm old and I've been married longer than Dave. There could have been a release of the song in 2003, John Larroquette is 75, but I didn't take the time to look it up.

TLDR: You're old, and so am I, but not as old as we used to think this age was.
 
Last week, I was looking for a couple of types of birds that I did not find. However, I did not have the same difficulty with the brown pelicans.

pelican 2023-02-20-01.jpg

pelican 2023-02-20-02.jpg
 
The Right Kind of Habitat

A Florida scrub jay perching in a recently burned area of the scrub sanctuary where it makes its home. Interestingly, the fire didn't cause any habitat loss. Instead, Florida scrub needs to catch fire every few years to maintain the biome and keep it from turning into a forest. The sanctuary maintains 4 different cells of scrub, separated by fire breaks, so they can set fire to one every couple of years to rejuvenate them. The scrub jays were taking advantage of this fire-cleared area. They were all over this cell, going about their business, hunting for bugs (and helpfully ignoring photographers.)

scrub jay against the burn 2023-06-30-01.jpg
 
One unexpected side-effect of Hurricane Idalia was a sudden influx of American flamingos to the United States. The birds have made appearances as far north as Ohio and Pennsylvania. And even though Florida has a few accidental visitations a year from flamingos, it has never been in numbers like this. There have been multiple sightings, and some of those have been of as many as 50 birds. Unfortunately for me, almost all of the sightings have been over 150 miles away from here.

So far, the closest sighting that I have been able to manage is finding another type of pink bird -- the more common, and paradoxically less well known, roseate spoonbill:

spoonbill 2023-09-10.jpg
 
Top