Sanibel

When we arrived on the beach, this is how the sunset looked.

Julie and I spent yesterday making the trip down to Sanibel Island, Florida. We're giving a lecture this afternoon at Ding Darling NWR for the DD Wildlife Society. It's our "Identify Yourself" talk about our book by the same name and we're looking forward to giving it.

Whenever we travel (and especially when we fly) we always try to guess the first bird we'll see upon arriving. Yesterday, upon landing at the Fort Myers airport, I guessed black vulture and Julie guessed cattle egret. We were both wrong. Boat-tailed grackle.

We soaked up the sunset from the beach behind our very nice hotel. And I did a bit of digiscoping. As we looked up the beach behind us, we could see dozens of camera flashes going off. We wondered why people would be using flash to photograph the sunset? Perhaps their cameras are still set on "Duh!" Every time I turn my camera on, it reverts to "Duh!" mode and I need to adjust it for digiscoping.

The white ibises (ibi?) were almost too close for digiscoping.

Anyway, great sunset, lovely sunrise this morning and some more digiscoping, too. I'd like to thank the very cooperative white ibis for their role in this morning's successful shoot.

Shutterbug Zickefoose strikes her action pose to get the perfect angle.

Minutes after our arrival, this is how the sunset looked. We took 4,000 pictures, each.

Sunset and extraneous minutiae. Photo by kindly bystanders.

Now, off to the refuge for some reconnoitering and (I hope) more digiscoping.