Done with winter

It seems like everyone is holding their breath for spring these days.  It's late March, and the weather is still acting like early February.  No one has the heart to enjoy winter activities right now (though we've been skiing once since coming back from Florida).  We just don't want to do it.  I'd actually be happy to go skiing if it were spring skiing... you know, the kind where you can take your jacket off and wear a fleece and sunglasses, while the snow slooshes around your skis.  But 20 degrees and a 20 mph wind- done with that.  We did it all winter and I'm done.

In between trying to get our (old) house on the market and getting school projects done, we've still managed to have some fun with friends and family lately.  We had a great St. Patty's Day brunch with friends, complete with an ice bar, karaoke, and a spacious ice cave.  And we had our annual non-xmas gingerbread house festival at the Camerons- this year building Easter houses with lots of peeps and jelly beans.  Ciara and Aiden found that they had a mutual love of Minecraft, and spent the rest of the day constructing a shared "world" on neighboring ipads.  The rest of the kiddos ran around playing something dramatic that seemed to have to do with princesses and babies.  This was directed by Haley and Phoebe of course.

Birding, yes please

white ibis

We did get in a little birding here and there in Florida, and Andy took some great photos of wildlife encountered on our trip.  At Bahia Honda, we scoured some sea grapes with a group of birders to find a stray bananaquit, probably blown in the previous week on the south winds.  We missed a black faced grassquit at the same park on that same day, but had too much fun swimming and beachcombing to mind.  We also saw some great birds in the Everglades, including at least 5 swallow tailed kites putting on an aerial display just a few meters over our heads.

palm warbler

little blue heron

Swallow tailed kite

bananaquit

And- the best bird- our only lifer this trip- we saw for a total of 5 seconds.  We spent about 5 hours looking for it, but that was actually VERY lucky as many have spent more than 35 hours looking before catching a glimpse of the elusive Key West quail doves that have been hanging out at Long Key State Park this winter. You have to walk extremely slowly, in complete silence, peering into the impenatrable tangle of a tropical hammock in order to spot just the slightest movement on the ground to find this bird.  We were about to call it quits on our second trip to look for it when we crept along a bend in the trail and another birder, wide-eyed, put his finger up to his lips.  He had it!  We crept up slowly and just as he was whispering where to look we saw the movement, raised our binos, just in time to see a single Key West quail dove walk off into the scrub, never to be seen again (at least not that day).  We thanked this unknown birder profusely, considered ourselves extremely lucky, and hightailed it out of there back to Islamorada for our last swim in the pool with the kids.  No picture of this one, needless to say.

looking for the key west quail dove

crocodile

osprey

blue winged teals

ovenbird