April 23rd, 2024

Credit to Joy for the above photo :)

Yesterday I promised to write up the Photo Safari Report for last week's hike.   It was such a great hike or actually a series of hikes, all of them in the same place, Mayakka State Park.  Joy and I drove (well technically she drove, I passengered) to a good place to hike, then of course we hiked around and took photos and then drove to the next great place and so forth.  So it's not one long hike, it's more a lot of small ones.  Still counts tho!  I guess therefore, I will call this one the Lotsa Hikes Hike.  That'll do.

It was, once again, an absolutely gorgeous day and perhaps because of that (?) we saw so much more variety than usual, meaning this time, it's not just birds :)  Oh there were birds, no question, but a really nice variety of them instead of mostly one sort.  What is it they used to say?  Oh yeah, Variety is the Spice of Life.  It's also the spice of photography!  

I may as well post the birds since I was just talking about them.  There were birds throughout the park, from the very first moment we passed the Ranger Station until we went back out. We were surrounded by all sorts of songs. Sometimes it's hard to find them even though you can hear them very clearly!  But if we are very patient and just stand in one spot, keeping our eyes peeled, eventually they usually reveal themselves.  So many different colours and sizes and personalities!  Love it.  Here is a sampling:

But we saw so many other wonderful creatures. After awhile you stop being surprised and just  accept the possibility that a dragon around the next corner would feel logical and reasonable ;)

You know that some trees really catch the attention of my eye and my camera.  Sometimes it's just one spectacular tree on it's own, other times it's a grouping:

Even thought there were flowers and interest foliage all around us, I took surprisingly few photos of them, so today, just a small handful:

I don't want to leave out my newest category, the black'n'white captures.  The smoke, by the way, we saw from quite a distance away and we assume (though one should never) that it was a controlled burn in another part of the park.  At least that's what we hope it was!

No rando's today!

I guess that's a wrap for the Lotsa Hikes Hike!  Hope you enjoyed it.  There is another hike planned for later this week and who knows what I'll have to share with you afterwards!

Hope everyone is happy and healthy and having fun!  
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Hugs all 'round.