Bike Riding Beauties

Sparky had been riding her bike in between subbing days, averaging anywhere from 12-20 miles a couple of times a week until she was sidelined with severe tendonitis on an ankle. No idea how that happened except thru ignoring a slight twist that must have happened months ago, then dancing her booty off a couple of months ago, then wearing not enough shoe support while subbing....all of the above, probably. It got to the point where she could hardly walk at the end of the day after subbing. Can't have that, so off to the doctor. The ankle was taped for a few days, and Sparky was told no bike riding (that is one of the worst things you can do for a bad ankle, the doctor said) and no swimming for three weeks. That was tough, following the doctor's orders. Then Sparky got a Trilock ankle brace which was great, and that helped a great deal. It's a little bit of an ordeal to put on, but you get faster at it after a few uses. TONS of velcro everywhere on it, always catches in the wrong place, so you have to keep unpeeling it until you get all the straps on layer by layer. After a month, the ankle still hurts now and then, but physical therapy is about to begin, so that should strengthen it, MAYBE.

Back to bike riding...YIPPEE! And here are some of Sparky's favorite photos from recent bike rides....All the photos are with a Canon SX530, a little point and shoot camera, currently just under 200.00, and it has a nice 50X zoom. If the pictures are with an iPhone, Sparky has captioned them as such.  Red lilies....

An osprey on the nest.....She's feeding two little ones and has a bit of fish caught on her beak.

Here's the dad preening....

March was the month for many sandhill crane hatchings in the area...Sparky took LOADS of photos of the mama and the babies, and here is ONE of her favorites...That's the mama's leg on the right.

Sparky was thrilled to catch a yellow rump warbler sitting still long enough to get a photo.

Blackbirds are a dime a dozen around here, but isn't this one beautiful with the iridescent shades of blue in its feathers?

Sparky's favorite Florida bird, the roseate spoonbill. This one was chosen to be featured in a weekly newspaper in our area...

Sparky likes the bottle brush tree...There are always little busy bees on them....This photo is with the iPhone 6S.

And finally....a limpkin or glossy ibis...It has the head plumage of a limpkin, and the body of the glossy ibis...But Sparky thought it was gorgeous....

Hope you enjoyed today's nature show!  Sparky will be back soon with tales from Sarasota Jungle Gardens, a very cool place to visit if you are in the area....Bye for now....

Bike Rides are NOT Boring in Bradenton!

Hi, folks...Sparky's on vacation...NOT! Not really, just going to blog today in first person...Me, Jeannie Sparks, a.k.a. "Sparky." Well, time to post a collage or two of nature's beauty that I have seen in the last several months on my 12-15 mile bike rides a couple times a week in the residential areas of Bradenton and Lakewood Ranch, a beautiful master planned community adjacent to where we live.....These are some of my favorite photos..Got lots more...But thought it would be nice to collage a set, although you can't see all the details that way. The bee in the middle is having a "bath" in a magnolia blossom. He was just diving in and out and all around in the fallen pistols (?) stamens (?) or whatever that magnolia "stuff" is. Then, when he realized there was a great big HUMAN photographing him, he started doing a wild and crazy warning dance to another bee who had alighted on the same blossom, who didn't pay him much attention. Down on the bottom right, a young heron with an itch....

I have been really lucky in all the nature and wildlife sightings that have graced my bike rides. Most of the time I use my iPhone 6S for the closeup nature and flower shots, and for the longer distance sightings, I have used my little point and shoot Canon camera that has 30X zoom for quite some time now.  I'm not very happy with it because often the birds' feathers are washed out, but I'm sure that's the amateur in me, not knowing how to fix that...I know that time of day is very important, so I try to take photos early in the morning and near sunset in the evening, as those are prime times, but my photos still look overexposed many times.

I've tried experimenting with different settings on the point and shoot, but I can't seem to figure out how to get improved visibility of bird feathers with this type of camera. Years ago, I thought a Nikon SLR camera would be more to my liking, but it wasn't portable enough and I found that it was taking so much time to switch out lenses and get the right settings that I gave up. I'm not a very patient person on things like that. I needed something a lot more simpler to grab and go, so I'm back to the Canon SX500 IS that I use, and my iPhone 6S, which takes amazing landscape and amazing close up photos. Some day I will upgrade my point and shoot again, and hope for a little better quality of detail on my photos when using that kind of camera. But I am REALLY happy with the iPhone 6S. Twice now, my iPhone photos that I submitted to a local newspaper were chosen to be featured as the photo of the week. Here's my latest chosen photo, a bee on a bristlecone flower, taken with the iPhone 6S, and published in the Observer, our local weekly newspaper.

When you are retired, you can stop and look at the darnedest things that capture your interest, just because you can. Sometimes, it's the bees on the flowers that captivate me....

Sometimes, it's the patterns on water or leaves that interest me.....

At any and ALL times, it's roseate spoonbills! (Yep, can't tell you how many times Sparky has yelled, "STOP! There's a spoonbill! Stop the car!" laughs E.) Just today, I happened upon a flock of seven spoonbills at a local park here in Sarasota. I have not seen a flock of spoonbills in over a year, maybe two. Just one here or there, but today, there were SEVEN of them! They were in a ditch over at Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, by UTC mall, having a feeding frenzy, not seeming to mind that people were walking by not too far from them. Usually, spoonbills are quite the elusive bird, and skittish around people. Not these....Here are three out of the seven....

Captured this spoonbill shot at a marsh that I ride by at least three times a week. It's on River Club road, in and around Lakewood Ranch, part of my 12-15 mile ride that I do about three times a week.
This is with my Canon point and shoot, 30X zoom...No doctoring at all of the photo...natural light, that's the bird's actual colors, everything just came together on this one.

I always see tricolored herons on my ride....

And a new batch of sandhill crane babies with their mom and dad....In case you missed them, they are at the bottom right of the photo....

The one day I was watching these little cuties late in the afternoon......

A small herd of deer passed directly to the right of me and crossed over the road to the other side...I have never seen a herd of deer, not even one or two deer in this residential area in the three years I've lived in Bradenton!

Saw this egret and spoonbill together in the same big marsh one day, that I pass by every time on my bike..It's a big marsh on River Club Road in Bradenton in Lakewood Ranch. Usually WONDERFUL sightings there, but not always...

A wonderful place to observe wildlife, Bradenton really has it all......You just have to keep your eyes open to see it and take your time....Until next time, when Sparky gets out on the Braden River to kayak!  See you later!

Fall Foliage and Fauna in Florida

Sparky has been bike riding in Bradenton lately....It's nice to go on the Legacy Trail, Sparky starts on the rails to trails route from McIntosh Road trailhead in Sarasota, to the trailhead in Venice, about 10 miles one way, but that's a straight shot, semi shaded, and you don't see much wildlife...There's a payoff near the end when you start getting near the water near Venice, but it's still a straight shot through the palms, dry areas and past Oscar Scherer State Park until you get closer to the water at Venice.

So Sparky decided to venture out into the neighborhoods...What a treat! She bike 12 miles one day and ten miles the next day through neighborhood after neighborhood in the Tara area of Bradenton--There is Tara Preserve and many many other subdivisions on golf courses along the way with lots of water in the ponds and lots of birds…And gators…This one was sunning himself on top of a water fountain jet. Another couple came riding by, they were from Scotland. Sparky had a wonderful conversation with them, thoroughly enjoying their accent while we discussed how fun it would be to see the water fountain turn on with the gator on top of it!

The ride is beautiful...It's shady, and it's a lot prettier than the Legacy Trail...And, you can ride on wide sidewalks instead of the street.

On another ride on another day, Sparky spotted a baby gator at the side of a neighborhood pond.....

A snowy egret with its black legs and the distinctive yellow feet….They use to kill these birds for their plumage to use for hats back in the early part of the century….

This guy got a little annoyed as Sparky crept a little closer for another photo…..You can certainly understand some of these expressions we've gathered from birds…"ruffle somebody's feathers"….

Some beautiful ornamental grasses with rose pink plumes....They line the parkway winding throughout the home subdivisions...

Some royal palms....They are so majestic!

The seed pods on these things are HUGE!

Sparky loves Bismarck palms....They are silvery and spikey....Kinda like Sparky's hair... :-)

A BUNCH of turtles.....They were clear across the bank, many yards away, and they still skeddaddled once they saw Sparky ride by on the bike. But she still caught them before they all submerged..."DIVE, DIVE, DIVE!"

We have fall foliage here in Florida, too...sniff, sniff.  (Sparky is missing the fall foliage north of here, explains E.)...Crotons are turning orangish...

Here's some red….Sparky thinks these are hibiscus hiding their blooms at the moment because it's a cool morning.

And whatever the name of this tropical plant is, it's GORGEOUS right now....It's always pink, but now it's DEEP pink....

Plenty of plants and trees are in full bloom...Wonder when they "rest"?

The bark on Florida trees is very interesting! This one is a tree philodendron like the kind that used to grow in a pot in our sunroom of Sparky's childhood home many a moon ago. The tree's branches have been trimmed leaving an interesting pattern...It's definitely a TREE and leaves are still sprouting!

Love the herons..…You can tell this is a tri colored heron because of his white underbelly.

Here's another heron, a little blue heron, spotted in another marsh along today's ride…..

It was a wonderful bike ride today. It's a wonderful ride EVERY day! The temperatures are so nice now! Right around eighty today, and sixties at night for this week. It doesn't start to get hot now until afternoon and even then, it's very tolerable, very low humidity...Yay! says Sparky!

See you later...On the bike trail, maybe on the water in Sparky's kayak soon!