May 12, 2007 - Lovers Key

One of the many joys of living in this state park is watching the wildlife.  Some wildlife are easier to watch than others.  For example, the manatees.  There is this canal we live on and the manatees will come and go at will, and there will be days on end when we won't see them, then for several days we'll see a lot of them.  They're friendly animals, seem totally unafraid of boats (thus the many scars on their backs) and, for the most part, seem to like being in small groups.  The most we've seen together is about 7 or 8.  Not easy to count for sure because the water in the canal is usually rather turbid and it's hard to see more than about a foot below the surface.

One day we were either going to or coming from the shop to do some work someplace, and there was a group of them "playing" with each other.  They were rolling around and we could easily see their undersides.  Sometimes they'd stick their entire head out of the water which is unusual behavior as usually they will just stick their nose up to get air.  We took at least 100 pictures of the activity, then Barb tediously narrowed them down to the little slide show here.  The last four slides are from our good friend and fellow volunteer, Ann, and she gets full credit for some excellent shots.

The little guy on the left is an Indigo Bunting.  Looks more like a LBB to me.  "Little Blue Bird."  They came through the park on their way north, and brightened up the place quite a bit.  Flighty little birds and tough to get a decent shot of.  Barb and I were out doing some work on a nature trail and they were all over the place.  She tip-toed and used up a lot of space on the camera chip and ended up with this good one.

Roger has a Corvette shop in Ohio and our resident mechanic in the shop for four months or so .  For some time, several guys had been trying to get this winch off the old rusted truck that the park has turned over to salvage.  No point in letting a perfectly (almost) good winch go with it.  Only it was rusted solid to the frame and wouldn't come out, WD-40 notwithstanding.  Roger had tied a chain to it, and the other end to this huge construction dumpster in the yard, and had attempted to loosen it by backing the truck up.  Only he's a Corvette guy, and the "bigger hammer" idea just isn't part of who he is.  So I helped.  I like bigger hammers sometimes.  Yup, we're holding part of the frame of the truck!

Not sure of the "next step" for the winch, but it's not on the rusty old truck any more that's for sure.

Barb's being very careful about how close she gets to these flowers.  They're on a Spanish Bayonet and, as the name implies, those leaves have tips sharp enough to go through a pair of leather gloves without slowing down.

Beautiful, but short lived, flowers and only on the mature plants.

Blossom matures from the bottom up, as you can see, and dies the same way.

Remember those signs Elmer and I (and others) were putting up along the trail that were so informative?  Well, some nice decorative rock around the base was deemed appropriate, so Barb and I are still working on that project.  In this picture, I'm spraying a herbicide around the base after we cleaned all the growth out, then we'll put down that cloth that lets water through but not seeds, then the rock goes on top of that.  Don't ask why we didn't take a picture of the finished base.  I promise we will later.

Not often do we see it this calm.  Even the clouds are reflected in the canal.  Mornings are so beautiful around here!

The gazebo is the place many weddings/receptions are held in.  That towel rack in front of me is used to hang bunting/ribbon/decoration on that comes down from the center of the roof and each of the 6 (or are there 8?) posts has one.  I'm mounting some brackets that will hold lights.

Can you imagine that the park staff calls this "work"?  What a view!  What weather!

Can't imagine what that picture of yet another pelican is doing in here.  Barb said she was shelling in the water and heard this splash--there was this guy right beside her, so she did what comes naturally and took a picture.  She loves these ungainly birds as much as I do.  This is an immature one, as the mature ones are like me....they have white on their heads!

These manatee shots were taken at the "Manatee Viewing Station" near the toll gate.  There's a small parking lot and a couple of benches there so visitors can enjoy the view.  The reason these animals congregate here is that they're constantly loosing their front teeth!  The connection?  Well, their teeth are much like a sharks teeth in that they're constantly growing new ones.  Only in the manatee case, they're actually moving forward in the jaw (sometimes they're referred to as "marching teeth") rather than from the inside toward the outside like the shark.  The reason is obvious.  These guys are herbivores, and since the grasses they eat are largely growing in sand, they wear their teeth down and eventually loose them.  So, what are they doing here?  Why, they're "flossing" their teeth!  There are several good sized roots running parallel with the canal under a shelf in this spot, and the animals will come here to rub their gums/teeth back and forth on those roots (at least that's a good theory--we've never actually seen them do it.  It's a pretty good sized shelf, and a medium sized manatee can get a good 25% of it's body under the shelf while flossing.

Poor old manatees are sort of slow moving, and boats are fast moving, and there's no fear whatsoever on the part of the manatee.  Boats with engines are not allowed in the canals of the park, but these animals have obviously been elsewhere some of the time.  There's a program to try to set up a database of identification for the animals based on the scar patterns.  That one big one obviously got its tail sliced by a propeller.

By the way, these pictures are colorful due to the color variations of the Sea Grape (local tree) leaves falling in the canal.  It's kinda like a New England fall when that occurs.

Manatees don't only eat grass from the bottom we discovered.  These guys are eating mangrove leaves from the top!  They heave themselves out of the water and grab a mouthful of leaves to munch on.  Amazing the things we learn by just sitting around.  Actually, I was inside the coach doing something and neighbor Ron came over yelling at me to get my camera, so I was able to get these pictures thanks to Ron.

The rental company crew came in late one day and erected the largest wedding tent we'd seen on the beach.  Turned out the owner of the rental franchise was getting married (or maybe it was his kid)!  What made this particular setup noteworthy is that a huge storm came up during the night with lots of wind, and this is what the tent looked like the following morning.  There weren't even any overturned tables or chairs!  The wind was in excess of 45 mph, and everything just sat there.  Didn't even see any scattered trash.

Guess what!  We left the park!  And went to another one, of course.  This is Honeymoon Island State Park.  Owned by a guy who worked a deal with the media some years back, and people could win a honeymoon here on the island for doing something or other.  Eventually went broke and the state got the property or something like that, and here we are, enjoying yet another beach and nice large piece of undeveloped real estate.  Getting pretty rare in Florida by the way.

Several miles of beach, and it's anything but overcrowded.  That fellow with the metal detector was having a good time, but he'll keep his day job.  Pretty slim pickings according to him.

Have you noticed how pictures of birds crop up here and there?  Could be we like birds, eh?  A laughing gull daring me to come closer, and a couple of ducks with a nest in the grass.  I thought Kenny (the manager of our concession at Lovers Key) would like these pictures of how they set up the umbrellas and chairs here.  Pretty slick operation, and obviously an expensive venture.

Barb was doing some shelling, and I was sort of wandering around to see what there was to see.  This pier is home to the ferry that takes people to another smaller island that isn't part of the park, and we didn't go check it out.  We were in this neighborhood because we needed to get the oil changed in the Road Abode and the dealer I wanted to have do the job is located about 200 miles north of Lovers Key SP, in Clearwater (up by Tampa).  While the coach was being worked on we went sightseeing.

The gull without its wings spread is a juvenile, and was squawking something terrific.  Eventually some adults arrived and fed it.  The racket was incredible.  Laughing gulls are noisy birds to begin with and when the kids are hungry it gets even worse.

Hard to tell the kids from the parents, but their activity kept me amused for quite a while.  I was sitting in the Jeep near the snack bar doing some net surfing (applicable terms for the beach, eh?) while Barb was shelling, and these birds were on the roof carrying on.

Barb took a picture of me stalking a sandhill crane family.  Two adults and two chicks.  These were taken at the Orlando Thousand Trails park in Clermont.

As you can tell, not much skill is required to "stalk" this family.  Matter of fact, I had to step aside to let them go down the road I was standing in.  First time we'd ever seen chicks, and it obviously was a thrill for us.  Funny looking chicks, but fun to see!

While we were at Clermont, I'd e-mailed Brie, our volunteer coordinator back at Lovers Key, to let her know we'd be coming back a little later than planned.  She responded by telling us to take time to stop by the Fort DeSoto County Park in St. Petersburg as there were a bunch of birds migrating through (she knows our love of birds).

It's a long narrow park with the beach along the gulf, and that, of course, was the first place we landed.  I was amazed that on a Saturday morning we could park in several different places with no problem.  At about 60 feet in length (with tow), I worry about things like parking, you know?  We even ended up in the shade!

We'd not been walking the beach 10 minutes when we spied this Lightening Whelk (a sea shell) egg casing.  The largest we'd ever seen by far!  Nobody who was around even knew what it was, but we did, and Barb was as excited as any kid with a new toy.  Because it had become detached from wherever the female had anchored it, it's considered "dead" and thus eligible to get hauled off by somebody like this crazy shelling woman I live with.  It found its way into the back of the Jeep in a hurry.  There are more pictures of it coming up later.

The bridge for I-275 across Tampa Bay is beautiful and so graceful.  The toll was something like $2 for the rig, and that's amazing considering that when we're towing the Jeep we have four axles to pay for.

We aren't sure what this is.  It's alive, as it moves around, but we have no idea what it is.  It's in about 6 inches of water here with fingerlings swimming around.

We're sure those are fish on the left (I call them "bait"), on the right a Wilson's Plover.  At first I was wondering what a Killdeer was doing walking around in the water.  Killdeers have two black "bibs" though.

That fellow has thrown a cast net before!  Nice form, even if he does have to take a step or two to do it.  Trapped a few small fish.  Next, we had to explore the fishing pier in the park, and I was anxious to see what was being caught.....if anything.

On the way, Barb caught a laughing gull with its mouth open, squawking away, and then another one all ruffled up by the wind.  The coloration on these birds might not be attractive, but it's sure distinctive.

Enjoyed seeing some shorebirds we weren't familiar with, but later learned they're Black Bellied Plovers, and that's a Royal Tern with its large orange bill.  Nobody on the pier was catching anything of note.  Some small throwbacks was all.

Once home again, we decided that looking around outside Lovers Key was an OK thing to do, so we went to the nearest neighboring state park, Delnor Wiggins.  Our assistant manager, Matt, has a brother who works here, and we've spent some time with Meredith and he's quite proud of his park.  After enjoying the beach for just a little while, we climbed the observation tower so we could see.......more condos under construction!  The park is on another barrier island, and you can bet the developers would love to get their hands on it.

Turning 180 degrees from those condos under construction (and already built) is the gulf.  We like this view better--over the trees.

OK, enough running around playing.  Now it's time to go back to work and earn our parking space and full hookups with a strong 50A electrical.  In the off-season, each RV space only has to put in 24 hours per week, rather than the on-season 32.  Since both of us work, it doesn't take much to get in the required hours.  One of the duties we've been assigned for the summer is the maintenance of "volunteer village" where the six RV sites are located.  Since they needed mowing and trimming, that was our first task.  As we looked at the two sites across from us, Barb declared that the rotting, twisted landscape timbers needed to go to the burn pile.  OK with me, as that would eliminate lots of time with the string trimmer, not to mention the lawn mower.  Matt agreed and we hauled them off. 

Under one of the timbers was a large ant nest.  These aren't fire ants, these are larger with red and black markings.  I tried to find their "official" name on the internet without much luck.  We simply call them "red ants".  This pile of eggs was mostly gone (relocated) within five minutes.  The ants divided themselves into two basic groups as soon as we exposed the nest.  About half of them were grabbing eggs and running off with them, the other half were looking for me and they were on the attack.  Sort of tough to take pictures of ants while stomping my feet, I decided.

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