RANDOM PHOTO OF SHRIMP BOATS IN APALACHICOLA, FLORIDA

An old photo taken over 10 years ago when driving through Apalachicola.

It was a flying visit as we were heading south. In those days dear other half still had his full-time job (retirement came the following year), and we were on a time schedule, needing to get back for work commitments. We were determined to see as much of the state as we could in the time that we had.  

Apalachicola's name is a Native American

 word interpreted as a ridge of earth produced by sweeping the ground in preparation for a council or peace fire. 

It was fun looking around the shrimp boats docked on Water Street. 

Oysters were Apalachicola's first seafood industry and were sold locally as far back as 1836, harvested in much the same way as they are today.  From what I remember back then, it was a lovely town.

Here are 10 interesting facts.

Apalachicola is one of the most productive oyster beds in the United States, historically provided 90% of Florida's oysters and 10% of the nation's total.

Established in 1831, it was once the third-largest port on the Gulf, bringing wealth and a diverse population to the area.

Apalachicola is part of Florida's 'Forgotten Coast." It got its name "because it is the last remaining stretch of unspoiled, pristine Gulf Coast beaches that haven't been overrun by high rises and strip malls. There are 200 miles of coastline, 5 islands and nearly 100 historic sites, and it is a part of the Big Bend geographic region.”

The original plan of Apalachicola, with its wide streets and squares, was modeled after Philadelphia and remains largely intact today.

The city is home to the John Gorrie Museum, which features a scale model of the world's first ice-making machine, invented by Dr. John Gorrie.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the sponge trade was a major industry in Apalachicola, largely driven by Greek immigrants who introduced advanced deep-sea diving and boat-building skills, dramatically increasing sponge harvesting efficiency and creating an extremely lucrative fishery in the Gulf.

The Apalachicola River and Bay form one of the most ecologically rich and biodiverse ecosystems in the United States, supporting diverse marine life and providing critical habitat for many species.

The annual Florida Seafood Festival, held in Apalachicola, is the state's oldest seafood festival, celebrating the region's rich maritime culture.

The city maintains a working waterfront, with active fleets of oyster harvesters and shrimpers, reflecting its continuing connection to the seafood industry.

Apalachicola has many historical landmarks, including the 1838 Orman House Historic State Park and the historic Chestnut Street Cemetery, the city's oldest burial site.

Two maps showing location.

“Again in Florida 

I float on transparent lakes

I float on the Okeechobee

I cross the hummock land

Or through pleasant openings

Or dense forests

I see the parrots in the woods

I see the papaw tree and 

the blossoming titi.”

    from Longings for Home 

By

Walt Whitman

Thanks for stopping by and

have a great day!

HAPPY SUNDAY EVERYONE - FAVORITE PHOTO

This photo was taken on a trip to Florida in 2014, to McKee's Botanical Garden in Vero Beach.  A marvelous place! I would definitely recommend it if you were in the area. 

Thanks for stopping by and have happy Sunday and a great week ahead!

BIRDS FOUND IN THE EVERGLADES - FROM MY ARCHIVES

 These are an archive continuation from our trip to the Everglades in January 2014.  One of the many reasons I enjoy Florida is because of the abundance of birdlife.  You can get up relatively close to them, especially when we were in the Everglades.

Wood Stork above and the Great Blue Heron below.

Next shows you the extraordinary pattern of feathers on the Anhinga.

Another perched on an old tree branch...

and one taking off across the water.

The Green Heron I shared recently.

The following extraordinary-looking bird is a Purple Gallinule.  Look at those feet?  Its long toes help it to walk on floating vegetation like lilypads.

Next is a Tri-colored Heron.

and also a Great Blue Heron (link in my second photo). He had just caught his lunch. Further away and photo is a little blurry.  

I made a collage of heads and already identified above, except for the Double-crested Cormorant top right.

That's all for today. 

Thanks for looking and 

enjoy your Friday!

A GREEN HERON FROM MY ARCHIVES - ANOTHER POST FROM THE EVERGLADES

I am not getting out and about right now as I have a sprained knee and have been told to rest up, so I am using another archive post from The Everglades. It's one I published on my old blog 10 years ago.

I was very happy to keep company with this Green Heron while he was fishing, and he wasn't that far away. He was very focused on his fishing to bother about me. I was on the walking path not too far from his position. (These photos were actually taken in January 2014.) 

You can learn more about this beautiful bird here. Its calls can be heard here.

A few facts, the Green Heron is one of the few tool-using birds.

In flight it resembles a crow but the wing beats are slower, a slightly different shape and the neck is a reddish brown.

Both parents incubate the eggs for 19 to 21 days (three weeks). My information came from this link and there is much more to learn at their website.

The birdlife in Florida left us with several amazing sightings, this being one of them. Since my first sighting of this awesome bird, I have seen them since in various places, on other holidays but also closer to home at Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria. You can revisit those posts below if you like.  

https://anenglishgirlrambles2016.blogspot.com/2023/09/more-from-huntley-meadows.html

https://anenglishgirlrambles2016.blogspot.com/2019/05/another-huntley-meadows-walk-part-2.html

I hope you have enjoyed my first ever sighting of the Green Heron.

Thanks for looking and have a great day!

THE TIME HAS COME...

 

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"to talk of many things, of shoes and ships

and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings,

and why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings."

~Lewis Carroll~

(If interested you can read the rest of this poem here.)

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898)), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician and photographer. His most notable works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871). He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. His poems Jabberwocky (1871) and The Hunting of the Snark (1876) are classified in the genre of literary nonsense.

More information can be found if you click on his name below the poem.

AN OLD TRIP TO SEE THE KEY DEER - FLORIDA KEYS

My post today is another transfer from my old blog.  We are going back to January 2014.

These sweet looking deer are the endangered Key Deer.  They can be found in Pine Key, in the Florida Keys, and are tiny compared to the White-tailed Deer.  

At first you feel like you are looking at a youngster.  However, an adult's shoulder height is only between 24 to 32 inches. A doe can weigh 45 to 65 lbs. and a buck 55 to 80 lbs.  At birth fawns only weigh between 2 to 4 lbs.

The wire fencing shown is surrounding someone's yard.  This little one was on the edge of the road, but I am not as close as it looks as I am using my camera with a zoom lens.  

Next is the same photo as above.  I used it for a blog post, and you can find it at this link. I repeat what I have shared here, but there is also more at other links. I removed the chain link fence using Paint Shop Pro. I believe there are even easier functions now, which I am only just discovering.  For instance, moving the background entirely by using a feature on google.com.  That way you can put the subject on any background you choose.

We were in a quiet neighborhood with not a lot of heavy traffic, the roads were narrow and the rare car we came across drove very slowly. 

The miniature Key Deer are a subspecies of the White-tailed Deer.  No one really knows the origins of the deer in the Keys, but it is believed that they migrated from the mainland thousands of years ago, across a long land bridge.  

As the Wisconsin Glacier melted, the sea rose dividing the land bridge into small islands, now known as the Florida Keys.

The earliest known written reference to Key Deer comes from the writings of Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, a Spanish sailor shipwrecked in the Florida Keys and captured by Native Americans in the 1550's.  If you want to find out more about him click on this link.  He had an interesting life.  This is another reason I love blogging, on researching a post I learn so much more.

And if you want to learn more about the Key Deer, you can click here.

Thanks for looking and enjoy your day!

SWAMP LILY

A single photo today, one of the beautiful Swamp Lily (Crinum americanum).

It was found on a walk in the Everglades National Park, Florida, on a road trip in January 2014.

The following description can be found here.

"Southern Swamp Lily is a perennial bulb in the Amaryllis family.  It is native to wetlands, swamps, marshes, and stream banks from North Carolina to Florida and west to Texas.  The species grows in small groups in still-water habitats, prefers a water depth of 1-6 inches, but will grow up to a 12-inch depth. 

Although it is native to wet sites it will grow in moist garden environments also, or it can be planted in containers that are kept moist to wet. Only use a pot 2 inches larger than the bulb. If growing in the garden, mulch heavily in the winter. Otherwise, it can be grown in water gardens, along streams, ponds or bogs. It prefers full sun to partial shade. Do not disturb the bulbs once planted or it may take up to 2-3 years before it blooms again."

ARCHIVE PHOTOS FROM A 2014 TRIP TO THE EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK IN FLORIDA

 This is a follow-on from the post I shared about the alligators, and are also from my archives.  We saw a lot of these interesting birds.  It is the Anhinga and they are extraordinary!  I particularly love the first photo where it is looking up towards the sky.  We were walking along the Anhinga Trail at the Everglades, on a road trip in January of 2014.To learn more about this bird click here.  Scroll down on that page and you will find an audio button sharing its call.Anhingas can stay underwater for substantial periods of time. It spreads its wings to absorb the warm sunshine. They are often seen perched with their wings spread, displaying their amazing plumage.  Whether wet or dry and especially in bright sunshine and cool temperatures, anhingas spread their wings, characteristically orienting themselves with their backs to the sun. They have unusually low metabolic rates and unusually high rates of body-heat loss. The spread-wing posture allows them to absorb solar energy to supplement their low metabolic heat production and to offset their high rate of heat loss. Anhingas lack the insulating layer of feathers sported by double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus), which are sometimes confused with anhingas because of their similar appearance. Coupled with their low metabolism, the anhinga's lack of insulating feathers limits the northernmost extent of their range to the southeastern United States. While anhingas range widely to the south to take advantage of the warmer temperatures offered by South America, double-crested cormorants range to the colder climates of the north, all the way to Alaska.Adult anhingas are large, dark waterbirds with a long, thin neck, a long, thin, pointed bill, a long tail, and silver patches on the wings. Males have greenish-black plumage overall, accentuated by silver-gray feathers on the upper back and wings that are edged with long white plumes. Females are brown with a lighter brown head and neck. Immature anhingas are more similar in coloring to adult females than to males. The anhinga is also known as the snakebird because it swims with its body submerged while stretching its head and neck out above the surface of the water, giving it the appearance of a snake about to strike while it glides through the water. They are also graceful fliers and can travel long distances without flapping their wings.Female anhingas typically lay from two to six pale bluish-green eggs. The parents share incubation of the eggs for 25 to 30 days. Upon hatching, anhinga chicks are naked and helpless. They eventually grow a white down on their belly and a dark down on their back. The chicks reside in the nest for about 3 weeks but if threatened, they are able to drop into the water and swim away, later climbing out of the water and back into the nest. At about 3 weeks of age they are able to climb out of the nest and onto a branch, and they fledge at about 6 weeks of age. They stay with their parents for several more weeks before becoming independent.My information came from this link.  

The sign reads: 

"This trail skirts the edge of a freshwater slough, where wildlife is likely to appear at close range.  The encounters are not exactly random; during dry season the slough operates like one of the many gator holes throughout the shallow river of grass.  In these deeper pools, fish become concentrated, attracting alligators, wading birds, and a throng of other creatures.  The drama is not just the largest egret or alligator but the combination of creatures and conditions - the water level, the killifish, the pond apple trees.

Anhingas may be found along this trail in abundance, often with their back to the warm sun and their wings out to dry.  Anhingas need this water because they feed by diving."

I certainly hope I can get back to Florida one day.  It has the most amazing wildlife.

Thanks for dropping by and I hope you have a great day.

WHAT WOULD THE WORLD BE...

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
Oh let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

~Gerard Manley Hopkins~

English Poet  (1844-1889)

Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets.  After his death a few of Hopkins's mature poems in anthologies were published.  By 1930 Hopkins's work was seen as one of the most original literary advances of his century. It intrigued such leading 20th-century poets as T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis.

The above photos were taken at Corkscrew Swamp, Florida, January 2014.  You can learn more at this link.

SATURDAY MORNING NOT AT THE BIRD FEEDER?

"And maybe some hand lotion?  All this swimming has really done a number on my hands."

It's been so hot the birds have been scarce, especially as I put the bird feeders away for the hot summer months.  They will be over later when the sun starts going down, to drink from the water bowl I put out.  I still have loads of photos to share of our chatty birds, but I didn't have time to put a post together. They will be back next weekend.

As for our alligator friend above, I have shared it before.  It was taken in the Everglades back in 2014, and as I reshared another post from there yesterday and for those who may remember it from before, I hope you won't mind another repeat.  I will be transferring an old post at least once a week for a while.

Enjoy your weekend!