A little photographic irony

Say you've been taking pictures for a couple of decades, taking classes and reading books to keep up your skills, taking untold thousands of photos in all kinds of conditions until you feel pretty confident of your abilities, but you're traveling with someone you love even though he has never taken more than a handful of photos and doesn't know the first thing about f-stops or blown highlights so when he says, "Quick, hand me the camera," you hand it over with low expectations, and he takes only one photograph.

And it's the best photo of the day.

Not fair. Not at all fair. I marvel at the beauty of the bird, but seriously: not fair! 

We're having a marvelous time tromping around various bird- and relative-intensive areas of Florida, including Wakulla Springs, where The Creature From the Black Lagoon was filmed, and you can certainly see why. We hiked at some length through the part of St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge that provides the setting for Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, and we even managed a side trip to Payne's Prairie, which wowed William Bartram in 1774. We have a few more days with family and a trip to the beach and then we had back home, where I understand it's getting cold.

But don't worry: we'll keep soaking in the sun so we can take some home with us, along with the photos and the sand in our shoes. And the photos.

Maybe I ought to share the camera more often!  

The lighthouse at St. Mark's.

I haven't been able to identify this adorable bird.

At Wakulla Springs, home of the Creature.

Mergansers!

A particularly elegant moorhen.