Adventures in the Wilds of Pure Florida

My long-planned travel has begun. Getting ready for the travel has taken me away from a lot of blogging activities. I've been directly chastised by UrSpo for my lack of posts. Mea culpa. I won't be lacking for interesting subject material in the coming weeks.

Greetings from Gainesville Florida. One segment of my regular readers should find this picture of the red Jeep and black Lab to be an instant giveaway regarding how I spent my day yesterday. Before I came down to Florida, I emailed FC and asked him if he'd be amenable to showing me a bit of his part of the world. We made plans to meet at Cedar Key Scrub and look for insects.

Cedar Key Scrub is a beautiful place, with lots of interesting plants and animals. We even got to see the rare Florida Scrub Jay. FC's photo came out much better than mine, so you can go see a good shot of it there. FC said that we were just a bit past the peak for fall wildflowers, but there was still lots to see.

Blazing Star (Liatris sp.)

Coontie

I was especially impressed with the blazing stars. There looked to be a couple of different species, and they were completely different from the ones that we have at home in Illinois. I also wanted to make sure that I got a photo of the Coontie, Florida's native cycad for Leon. FC has promised seeds and instructions. Great, now we can have seedlings from a second species of cycad all over the house.

Band-winged Grasshopper awaiting identification.

Bird grasshopper (Schistocerca) I'm pretty sure this is S. rubiginosa.

Eastern Lubber (Romalea microptera)

Our walk began with the temperature cool and dew still in the grass. We didn't see many insects at first, but eventually tings warmed up. There were tons of grasshoppers. I had hoped to see beetles- and they too put in appearances.

A flower longhorn beetle (Typocerus sp.)
Actually Strangalia sexnotata.  Thanks, Ted.

One of the Dynastine scarabs

Of course, the beetles that I wanted most to see were tiger beetles. It was fairly late in the walk before they showed, but I was not disappointed. This form of the Festive Tiger Beetle is a new subspecies for me. Sadly, my images are only so-so.

Festive Tiger Beetle (Cicindela scutellaris scutellaris)

As good as the insect viewing was during the trip, the herps were the truly memorable wildlife of the day. I guess that's not surprising, I was getting the full Pure Florida treatment here. I got a great photo of a toad.

Toad!

Late in the walk, FC leat Bear trail his leash and run up ahead a few feet to wait in the shade for us to catch up. At one point Bear was about 20 feet ahead of me, with FC close behind. I let out a yelp. Bear had walked just inches from a diamondback rattlesnake, with FC passing not much further away from it. FC restrained Bear to keep him out of harm's way, and we both got some photos of the snake.

Florida Diamondback (Crotalus adamanteus)

I'll get you- and your big moose of a dog, too!

We kind of got lost during our hike. At least that's what FC said. I did at one point wonder if the hike was just more appealing than the honey-do list that Mrs. FC might have had waiting for him back home. We agreed to hike for a couple of hours and were out for over twice that. FC is a great guy, and I couldn't have asked for a better guide to this little slice of Floridian wonder.

Meeting Cobban and Ray

L-R: Cobban, Doug, Ray

I had wanted to post this earlier, but left my camera at work over the weekend. On Friday, I met another blogging friend and his partner. Cobban writes the Lopaka Lounge blog. He and Ray live between Bisbee and Sierra Vista, Arizona, one of my favorite places on the planet. Cobban and I have been corresponding for about a year and a half. He and Ray are great guys. It was fun showing them around the museum. We went for lunch at North Pond afterwards. We're going to try to get together when I'm out in southeast Arizona in a few weeks.