What did I get for the last day of 2009?  Otter photos!  Headed out to my favorite spot and caught four of these guys walking down the road twords my car…they got fairly close and then turned around and headed into one of the canals.  Otters are so comical to watch!

This first shot was when they were pretty far down the road, so it’s blurry.  I cropped this quite a bit, but I thought it was so cute how the one stood up and was the look out!

And, as an added bonus….I saw an American Bittern not too far away from where the otters were, the first American Bittern I’d seen in that area, so that was pretty cool!

I also swung by Manatee Park yesterday in Fort Myers, caught this cutie coming up for air…check out the teeth!

The manatees come into the canal at the park via the river from the Gulf.  In the winter, when the Gulf gets cold they come to the park because it sits right next to the Power Plant, which keeps the water nice and warm.

Upon leaving Manatee Park, I got a nice shot of a Blue Gray Gnatcatcher in the parking lot:

Happy New Years to you and I hope you have had a great 2009 and have an even better 2010!

I’ve got quite a few to-do lists (especially to do with portraits, the studio, lighting, etc), but for today I’ll just write about the areas I want to make sure I visit in 2010 for wildlife photography.

The first one is Circle B Bar Reserve – I almost got up there before Christmas to meet up with the flickr group, but I got sick and stayed home.  This place seems to be just loaded with wildlife (going by the photos my wonderful flickr contacts have been posting, this is one place I NEED to go!)…and the ’stars’ being the hundreds of white pelicans seen there.

Another place on the list is Fort Desoto.  I’ve heard a lot of good things about this place for getting some unique birds…including Frigates, another one on my list!

Also, Jamie has been going to the Canaveral Locks (I think this is the place here) and getting Gannetts.  These birds are definitely on my ‘want’ list, so maybe when I get back to Viera Wetlands, I can get Jamie to show me the locks   And I do want to get back to Viera Wetlands and do that again, recently my contacts have been posting Masked Duck and Otter photos from there!

I do have one Gannett photo, just one.  I saw this guy while we were on a whale watching trip in Cape Cod, the guide pointed it out as we were heading out to see the whales.

Of course, I’ll be hitting all the local haunts of mine…. Dinner Island, Corkscrew, Ding Darling and the ones I try to frequent down south like Green Cay, Wako and Loxahatchee.

See you out in the field!

Wanted to post a couple more photos I took Monday while out with my friend, John.  I’m hoping to get out and do a little more wildlife photography this holiday weekend also.

Burrowing Owl in Punta Gorda, Florida

White tailed deer in Myakka River State Park…we saw her and tried to tip toe through the woods to get closer (of course, I couldn’t sneak up on anything in the woods, I seem to step on every twig!)she was in some dark shade so I did what I could to get the shutter speed up but it’s a bit noisy…she was so cute, I had to post this one.

I can’t believe 2009 is almost over….it went by so fast!  I hope everyone has had a great year and gets to have an even better 2010!

I had yesterday off, and I spent it shooting wildlife photos with my friend, John.  Lots of critters were out yesterday and the weather was great…till late in the afternoon when all of a sudden the wind whipped up and it got COLD!  Ok, for those of you non-Floridians…a windy day in the 50’s is cold.

Here’s a few shots from yesterday: