Fort Myers and Cape Coral comprise one of the largest urban areas in Southwest Florida with a metropolitan area population of about 620,000 people. Located where the wide Caloosahatchee River meets the Gulf of Mexico, this area is one of Florida’s major tourist destinations. Millions of snowbirds winter here together with the real birds that my friend Sharon and I went to see.

Our base was on Pine Island at the western edge of the area, about 18 miles from downtown Cape Coral and another couple of miles across one of three long bridges over the Caloosahatchee River to downtown Fort Myers. As we expanded the area that we explored from Pine Island outward we didn’t fail to include these cities. We found great parks teaming with wildlife there.

We even found birds on busy street corners. These Burrowing Owls live in an otherwise vacant lot next to Annie’s Cafe at the southeast corner of the intersection of Coronado Parkway and SE 47th Street in Cape Coral. I hadn’t expected to find Burrowing Owls in Florida (much less in a city), because the ones we have in Colorado live in burrows that prairie dogs build. As far as I know, Florida lacks prairie dogs, so the owls there have to dig their own burrows, which is easier there in the soft sand than in the rocky Colorado soil.

A Family of Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia)

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I love not only the expression of the owlet in the photo below but also the simple background. It’s the pavement of SE 47th Street.

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Punta Gorda is a small city on Charlotte Harbor 30 miles north of where Sharon and I stayed during our month in Florida. Punta Gorda’s greatest distinction is that it’s where my friend Bob Guetzlaff lives. I got to know Bob when I toured Panama two years ago and have kept in touch with him since then.

Early one morning Sharon and I met Bob at the Alligator Creek Preserve of the Charlotte Harbor Environmental Center, where we hiked. Sharon took this shot of Bob and me when we weren’t looking.

My Friend Bob (at left) and I Amble Along the Eagle Point Trail in the Alligator Creek Preserve

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Later, Bob took us to some of his favorite places, including Ponce de Leon Park in Punta Gorda. This is where I watched this little bird at work.

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During our January visit to Southwest Florida for nature, hiking, photography, and birding, Sharon and I relied heavily on the guide to the Great Florida Birding Trail. We explored the 23 sites within about an hour and one-half of our base on Pine Island, some of them multiple times. But we also went to 20 other places were I took photographs that I saved, and I took the most photographs that I saved at one of those other places, the Randell Research Center.

We visited this facility of the Florida Museum of Natural History almost every afternoon because its grounds are so beautiful and the wildlife so plentiful. It was also only 6 minutes from the condo that we had rented. The center is a site of archaeological significance, since it was a Calusa Indian village for more than 1,500 years with enormous shell mounds still overlooking the waters of Pine Island Sound.

The Grounds of the Randell Research Center Just Before Sunset

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Pine Island is “old Florida.” This term denotes the way this rapidly growing state was at least two generations ago. Sharon wisely chose to base our month-long stay away from the high rises and hustle and bustle of the cities.

At a length of 17 miles and a width of two miles, Pine Island is the largest island in Florida. It is a barrier island off the coast from the cities of Cape Coral and Fort Myers. With a population of just 9,000 people and not a single stoplight, Pine Island is a laid back place that we thoroughly explored and enjoyed.

With a whole month to discover the natural treasures of Southwest Florida, our strategy was to start by exploring the island and generally go farther and farther. Our main guide was the South Section of the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail. This wonderful resource catalogs the best sites to find Florida’s birds. Pine Island itself actually doesn’t have any Great Florida Birding sites, but it still has lots of great birds.

Our exploration of Pine Island got off to a great start on our first full day there. Driving the main road through the island, we saw a raptor that I had never seen before, a Red-shouldered Hawk. Later we saw several more and appreciated that they are about as common in Florida as Red-tailed Hawks are in Colorado, but my first view of it was an exciting discovery for me.

A Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) Takes Off

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My friend Sharon rented a two-bedroom condo on Southwest Florida’s Pine Island for the month of January and invited me to share it with her. Of course, I accepted.

The weather there was rather better than in Boulder, Colorado, where each of us live. While the temperature reached 84° on Pine Island when we were there, Boulder’s temperature dropped to sub-zero for three days, going as low as -6 degrees on January 15. By comparison, the worst cold snap that we experienced in Florida came on January 18, when the temperature only reached 66°.

January was also a dry month in Southwest Florida, while Boulder got several inches of snow. Rain stopped us from getting out only on the morning of January 7 and until late morning on the 31st. The birding and photography were so good that we logged more than 386,000 steps, the equivalent of 123 miles, according to my new pedometer. We chose a good place and time for an active vacation.

The condo that we rented is on Blue Crab Key, 25 landscaped acres surrounded by water on all sides and connected to the rest of Pine Island only by a short causeway. It is a townhouse condominium development with 120 two-story units in 20 buildings.

The Front of Our Condo, the Second Unit from the Left

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After church on Sunday, Sharon and I went birding at Clear Creek, about 25 miles south of Boulder. I had gone there the day before and found a most colorful Mandarin Duck that I wanted Sharon to be able to see. While she wondered if I really wanted to go to the same place two days in a row, these trips were quite different.

On Saturday, I found the Mandarin Duck within a few steps of my SUV. I didn’t even look for any other birds. And I took 1,348 shots of it in the 51 minutes I watched it in Clear Creek.

On Sunday, Sharon walked all up and down Clear Creek in Prospect Park for miles in search of the Mandarin. We discovered more than a dozen species of birds in the hours that we hiked the trails, and I took only 1,000 photos of them. I say “only” because since my camera can take eight frames per second, I could have taken thousands more in that time. I took it easy.

The first flock of birds we came across were three goldeneyes, named for the brilliant yellow irises that they have. This is one of the last species to migrate south when the weather turns cold. It winters as far north as open water permits, and Clear Creek is one of the last creeks up here to freeze over.

Neither Sharon nor I had ever come so close to goldeneyes before. Consequently, we didn’t realize that the male’s head is a bright iridescent green as well as black when it’s in full sun.

A Female Common Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula) with Two Suitors (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 235mm, f/8, 1/750, ISO 800, -0.5 EV)

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This morning since I couldn’t decide whether to hike to Bobolink Trail along South Boulder Creek or along Clear Creek, 25 miles from here in Jefferson County, I hiked both. Even though the temperature was below freezing, that wasn’t my concern. I wanted sun and the prediction was for clouds. But after I answered my email this morning, I looked out and saw what I was looking for. Immediately, I hit the road and then the trail.

Since I didn’t expect the sun to last, I headed for the Bobolink Trail, which is just three miles northeast of my apartment. But like all the streams, lakes, and reservoirs that I’ve visited recently in Boulder County, it was frozen over. I saw only a couple of blackbirds.

So I headed to the section of Clear Creek that flows through Prospect Park in Wheat Ridge. The creek is so wide and so swift that no ice has formed on it. Instead, it was covered with ducks.

Almost all of the ducks were Mallards. But among them, I spotted one male Mandarin Duck. I couldn’t have hoped for anything more.

I had seen a Mandarin Duck along the same stretch of Clear Creek on April 30, 2011, and my guess is that the same guy had returned after a long flight elsewhere. That day a year and one-half ago I got off only 166 shots of this colorful bird before clouds rolled in and spoiled the view. Today I managed to capture 1,348 images in the 51 minutes that the Mandarin and I were together. I also had better light today and a little more experience. Consequently, today’s shots were a bit better.

The Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata) Looks Proud (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 310mm, f/8, 1/1000, ISO 800, -0.5 EV)

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The Water Ouzel is a special bird that I have longed to see ever since I hiked up to Ouzel Falls in Rocky Mountain National Park more than four years ago. But I failed to see it then.

Actually, nowadays we call this songbird an American Dipper or by its scientific name, Cinclus mexicanus. But, like many people, I prefer to call it a Water Ouzel.

This spring, Sharon took to a swift-moving section of Boulder Creek to show me where she had seen one earlier. We didn’t see it that day or in the two or three times I went back there in the past six months. But I finally found it there last Wednesday:

A Water Ouzel Perches along Boulder Creek (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 400mm, f/8, 1/60 with fill flash, ISO 800)

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I was able to get close enough to use my camera’s internal flash, which was necessary because the sun had just gone down. Even though the light was poor and I didn’t capture the Water Ouzel in the water, I was pleased enough with this shot to send it to my friend Marveen. She in turn suggested that re-reading what John Muir had written about this unusual bird would be even more enjoyable for me now. It was.

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The sun briefly came out from behind the clouds on Sunday afternoon, so I walked out from my apartment in South Boulder to Tantra Lake and photographed our birds for an hour. I wanted to get some better shots of the migrating Ring-necked Ducks than I got the two previous afternoons.

Mostly, however, I saw Canada Geese. What we call “the goose step” is a special marching step that soldiers perform in formal military parades. But Canada Geese perform it informally.

True Goose-Stepping (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens at 400mm, f/8, 1/1000th, ISO 400, -0.5 EV)

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On Sunday afternoon when I looked out the window at my desk where I was working, I saw that the sky had cleared. For me clear skies = stop working. Since I live in Boulder, which brags about our 300 sunny days a year, that means I don’t get much work done.

My work indeed came to an immediate halt. I intended to drive to a favorite preserve, but just in case I could see some Tundra Swans that someone had reported at Baseline Reservoir, I stopped there and looked.

From the road I could see a flock of them in the distance. So I stopped there instead of going on. I parked my SUV on the south side of the reservoir at the dirt road behind a locked gate and crawled through the barbed wire fence. Then I walked back with my camera and tripod until the swans were at a right angle to this trail.

The swans were still several hundred yards out in the reservoir, so I was glad that I had mounted my teleconverter on my lens. That gave it a 560mm reach, but when I use a teleconverter with my camera and lens, I lose autofocus capability. Precise manual focus is much harder than autofocus, but since the light was good, I was able to stop down to f/16. That gave the lens a greater depth of field.

I also took a lot of pictures — 1,112 during my 1 1/4 hour visit — in hopes that some of them would turn out. Some did:

Two Adult Tundra Swans (Cygnus columbianus) and One Juvenile Rest on Baseline Reservoir (Canon 7D with 100-400mm lens and 1.4 teleconverter = equals 560mm, f/16, 1/500, ISO 800, -0.5ev)

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