"Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.”
          ~ Bryce Courtenay from The Power of One

Fort Desoto Park has to be one of the nicest parks I've visited in a very long time. Amazingly, it costs just thirty-five cents to cross a toll bridge into this county park. That's it. Thirty-five cents. You can do just about anything on the island. Mullet Key is skirted on the Gulf side by powdered sugar beaches that win awards. There are hiking trails and biking trails and paddling trails. There are two piers - one 500' and the other 1000' - that are open 24/7 for chasing your fishin' jones. And its namesake, Fort Desoto, is a pretty amazing attraction with some mighty firepower that was never fired against an enemy.

North Beach is pretty famous in the bird photog world, and indeed, prowling around some tide pools and marshes near the point early one morning, I came across a tour group of photographers sporting some pretty serious firepower of their own.

On this night, I was delighted to find a great white egret riding the roof of the fishing hut at the end of the longest pier in the strong Gulf breeze, watching the ball fall and waiting for fish, just like the two-legged hunters out there.

Most everyone gathered at the end of the pier or on the noth side of it, where the view of the sun was unblemished. I sat in the sand nearly under the the pier's onramp, waiting for the same ending as everyone, watching the light change, the colors bloom, and the sun's vertical transit down the pier.

I sat there, fully happy in that moment and completely grateful for my own inner ear and - right or wrong - my own kind of vision.

And that egret...that egret held its pose on the roof facing west until the light show was over. Then, like the rest of us, it was gone. Some things, it seems, are just destined to become nothing more than memories.

Nikon D2x, Nikkor 80-400mm VR @ 400mm, 1/80th sec, f/10

"Hold fast to your dreams for without them, the broken winged bird cannot fly.”
          ~ Langston Hughes

I am writing this post from camp site #78 in Fort DeSoto Park, which is on Mullet Key on a brave little cell phone connection. Amazing, when technology works for you.

I am here for a few days of rest (as though photographers afield ever do that!) and hopefully a photo op or two. It's been stunningly gorgeous weather. The park is pretty, the paddling delicious and wildlife abundant. So far, in our little site nestled in the cabbage palms, there have been maurading raccoons, squirrels, cardinals, red-winged blackbirds, crows, ibises, herons of all kinds, very noisy laughing gulls who are mating everywhere I look, squirrels and some very noisy campers next door. As I said, wildlife is abundant.

Today, after a wonderful paddle to Shell Key and a long afternoon of reading and beachwalking, we returned to find four of these parakeets screeching in a tree on the edge of the camp site. I was amazed. The green was so luminous! I had my Nat'l Geo bird ID book with me and to my surprise, read: "native to Brazil and Argentina. Introduced in Pinellas County, Florida."

Cool beans. Parakeets! A new one for my feather book.

Nikon D2x, Nikkor 80-400mm VR @ 400mm, 1/400 sec, f/8