Male Northern Cardinal singing in a vast marshland with the Meadowlarks and Red Winged Blackbirds. It is always a treat to see - and hear - this amazing bird so typical of backyards out in the middle of nowhere with nary a tree to be found.
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A rare joint appearance by Alpha males Painted Bunting and Northern Cardinal - these guys don't really get along - and a glimpse of a Bald Eagle. The Eagle was roosting in the same tree as the Great Horned Owl. Sadly I wasn't paying attention and spooked the eagle before I could get some decent footage. And a Butterfly just for fun. It is rare for the stunning male Bunting to venture out in the open to this feeder.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) newest weather satellite, Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-S (GOES-S), launched Thursday, March 1 at 502 PM from Cape Canaveral. Clouds got in the way of the view a minute into the launch, but still awesome!
Introductory launch pad clip from NASA Public Live feed: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive
A large rare and endangered Gopher Tortoise or "Gopher Turtle" passed through the Backyard! One of the rarest and coolest of visitors it seemed to be on a mission to get where it was going behind the Backyard. These are amazing creatures - one this big could be 40 to 60 years old and has seen a lot of changes in the Florida landscape in its life, fortunately there are still a few places in developed areas for them to survive.
Gopher Tortoise: (Gopherus polyphemus)
Appearance:
The gopher tortoise is a moderate-sized, terrestrial turtle, averaging 23–28 cm (9–11 in) in length. The species is identified by its stumpy, elephantine hind feet and flattened, shovel-like forelimbs adapted for digging. The shell is oblong and generally tan, brown, or gray in coloration. Gopher tortoises can live 40 to 60 years in the wild.
Gopher tortoises are ancient: their ancestors are a species of land tortoise that originated in western North America some 60 million years ago. They are members of the Class Reptilia, Order Testudines, and Family Testudinidae. Of five North American tortoise species (genusGopherus), the gopher tortoise is the only one that occurs east of the Mississippi River.
Habitat:
Gopher tortoises live in well-drained sandy areas with a sparse tree canopy and abundant low growing vegetation. They are commonly found in habitats such as sandhill, pine flatwoods, scrub, scrubby flatwoods, dry prairies, xeric hammock, pine-mixed hardwoods, and coastal dunes which have historically been maintained by periodic wild fires. When fire is suppressed in gopher tortoise habitat, small trees, shrubs, and brambles begin to grow making it difficult for the gopher tortoise to move around and eventually shade out the low growing plants that gopher tortoises eat.
During winter, tortoises are much less active; although on warm afternoons some individuals trudge to the earth's surface to bask on the sandy aprons of their burrows. A superb earth-mover, it lives in long burrows that offer refuge from cold, heat, drought, forest fires and predators. The record length for a burrow is over 47 feet long, however, the burrows average 15 feet long and 6.5 feet deep. The burrows maintain a fairly constant temperature and humidity throughout the year and protect the gopher tortoise and other species from heat, cold, drought, and predators. Burrows also act as a refuge from the periodic, regenerative fires that are required to maintain the quality of their habitat.
Gopher tortoises have adapted to living in dry habitats with frequent fire occurrence by digging burrows deep into the sandy soil. The absence of natural cycles of burning in pine forests spells hardship for tortoises. The dense vegetation (shrubs, brambles, small trees) that grows in a forest in the absence of fire shades out the tender herbs tortoises like to eat, and limits their food supplies. Fire is vital in maintaining many native ecosystems, like longleaf pine sandhills, where gophers live.
Behavior:
Gopher tortoises are slow to reach sexual maturity, have a low fecundity, and a long life span. Females reach sexual maturity at 9–21 years of age, depending on local resource abundance and latitude; males mature at a slightly younger age. The breeding season is generally April–November. Nests are constructed (often in burrow mounds) from mid-May to mid-June, and only one clutch is produced annually. Clutch size is usually five to nine eggs, with an average of six. Predation on nests and hatchlings is heavy.
These reptiles feed on low-growing plants like wiregrass, broadleaf grasses, and legumes (bean family plants). They also eat prickly pear cactus, blackberries, paw-paws, and other seasonal fruits. In addition to needing open areas with abundant food, gopher tortoises require relatively deep, sandy soils for burrowing and sunny spots for laying eggs.
An amazing trait of the gopher tortoise is that it shares its burrow with more than 350 other species, including burrowing owls, Florida mice, indigo snakes, opossums, rabbits, gopher frog, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes and gopher crickets. For this reason it is called a keystone species, so named because the upper stone in an arch, the keystone, supports the other stones to hold them in place. Animals which utilize the gopher tortoise burrows are known as commensal species. Since many commensal species depend on the burrows for survival, decreases in gopher tortoise populations result in a decline of other species.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Gopher Tortoise Home Page:http://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/man...
Thousands of Portuguese Men of War are invading Florida beaches. They are not really Jellyfish, but a unique organism made up of organisms. This mini-documentary shows these beautiful, but dangerous stinging creatures along the east coast beaches of Florida in February 2018.
✷AMAZON - my Backyard shop with products I've bought, use and recommend for making videos, photos and enjoying Nature!https://www.amazon.com/shop/mybackyar... https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/p...
Stock floating Man of War footage from Creative Commons YouTube video library attribution:https://www.youtube.com/attribution?v...
A large group of Florida Manatees congregate below a remote water control structure waiting for tasty clumps of water grass to spill over. A group of Manatees is called an aggregation and large numbers usually do not gather except in Winter to find warmth or an unusual good food source. Here they find both, but its not particularly cold.
If you look closely you will see the scars from collisions with boat propellers on a few of the large Manatees. Many area of Florida waterways are designated reduced speed Manatee Zones to try and reduce collisions. These are large creatures related to Elephants that can live very long lives and reach 10-12 long and 1,500 pounds.
The Florida manatee is a native species found in many of Florida’s waterways. The Florida manatee population has grown to over 6,600 animals today and as a result, in early 2017 the Florida manatee was reclassified from an endangered to a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act. This change in the species status is based on an increasing population and the establishment of effective protection measures to ensure the continued conservation of the species.
In 1975, Florida’s school children helped designate the endangered Florida manatee as Florida’ state marine mammal. Since then, various research, management and educational efforts have occurred to bring back a species that many people thought was on the verge of extinction.
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Best Red Shouldered Hawk imitation yet by Backyard Blue Jay and it freaks the squirrels out - leading to another camera mishap. If you watch closely you can see that the Blue Jay makes this big loud sound much like a ventriloquist - it barely opens it's beak to form the unique sounds of the hawk. ✷AMAZON - my Backyard shop with products I've bought, use and recommend for making videos, photos and enjoying Nature!https://www.amazon.com/shop/mybackyar...
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Beautiful female red morph Eastern Screech Owl resting outside the nest box. Hang out with mother owl for awhile she is awesome. More found footage from a few seasons back. The females have always been red and the male gray since 2011. The female this season (2018) has been roosting since early December but she keeps switching nest boxes and hasn't committed to laying eggs yet, but she should very soon. I just hope she picks the best nest with the camera inside.
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50+ Cormorants chill on a buoy cable after gorging on fish. If one Cormorant is nice fifty is better. I counted 52 all in all. Cormorants are large birds and you will see them look small next to a few White Pelicans that have some of the largest wing spans of North American birds.
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Mesmerizing Spiny Orb Weaver Spider making a huge web highlighted by the morning sun. Consider that this spider is smaller than a dime and it spins out this much silk, how is that even possible?
Close-up of the earlier stages of the web spinning can be seen at:https://youtu.be/DwLn11KJS9Y
