I swear I was just sitting on the beach one day, taking some photos of the sunset.  When all of a sudden this guy comes right up to me and starts clicking his claws at me over and over.  When I turned my head to look directly at him and consider taking his photo, he raised clasws and took and couple small crab-steps towards me.  That’s when I knew I had to get this guys photo.

This particular crab is called a ghost crab. They usually come out at night or a bit earlier if the feeding is good. This ghost crab was on Service Club beach in Venice Florida.

Treasure Island is a both a barrier island and a small town of the same name on that barrier island. It’s one of the barrier islands right off the west coast of the peninsula that is Pinellas county.

Treasure Island is one of the more “commercial” of the barrier islands in the area. Which is okay, it’s good to have a beach island with a putt-putt course on it.It’s littered with hotels, nightclubs, condos and grocery stores. It does have several public beaches and a wonderful pass to the Gulf of Mexico. The pass is always busy and provides access for some surprisingly large boats. but if your looking for solitude it’s probably not going to happen. There is a nature preserve on the islands bay side that’s surprising large and is a great spot for birding.

At any park or natural are in Florida you’ve got to watch your step and keep your kids within arms reach. Even if you’re on the trail, even if it’s a paved trail. This big boy was about 3 feet from the trail, about 100 feet from the main building, all coiled up and ready to strike.
Eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes aren’t very shy. They do prefer to work and in live without being noticed. But if you do notice them, they will NOT flee.

What makes them even more dangerous is how well they blend in with their surroundings. They seem to change color a bit depending on the time of the year or their surroundings or something. Look at how muted the colors are on this one are. This one is surrounded by faded gray dead wood. These diamondback rattlesnakes on the other hand are surrounded by brighter colored dead and living ferns, and their colors are brighter, more orange… I don’t think they actually change color like an octopus, but they are definitely the same species and they are definitely different colors…

Little known fact: St Petersburg’s pier changes color at night.  It’s fairly subtle, every few minutes, the pier subtly changes from one color to another.  They have a full time staff of apprentice Wizards from Hogwarts on it.

A note of the photos:
I took special care to take great photos at night.   I think I did pretty well, those white dots aren’t dust on a paper photo, those are stars in the sky!  If you look close you can even see some of them reflected in the water.  Mmmm, maybe I should have edited them out cuz they look a bit like dust on a scan of a paper photo…  anyway the last photo is a close up of the pirate ship that was docked there the night I was taking photos.

This one will make a nice wallpaper I think, because it’s big and not cluttered at all.

Moon photo1600 x 1050 wallpaper

Way back in 2003 I was riding my bicycle home from work along harbor drive in Venice Florida.  It was exactly right here, except the area wasn’t taken over by that restaurant, it was still part of the park that was close by.  It was an area with tall ferns giving way to a forest (they ironically cut down all the trees, bought new ones and planted them there, all at taxpayers expense!) , a beautiful wild space.  Not three feet from the sidewalk I saw two VERY (each easily more than afoot around and eight feet long) large Eastern Diamond back rattlesnakes fighting.

Well I watched them for a while and it seemed like they had no interest in stopping so I hoped on my bicycle sprinted the few miles home grabbed someone else’s digital camera (a sucky kodak), then headed back.  I thought for sure they would be gone by the time I returned.  They were not.  They were still actively engaged.

Here’s a warning for all yo would be photographers out there.

No it’s not about the dangers of getting too close to venomous snakes, that goes without saying, My warning is about technology.  In my original photos you could still see things like the drops of that afternoons rain on the ferns leaves and the details of the snakes eyes.  But I had a hard drive crash and lost them all.  The only copies I have are these which were the highly compressed copies I put on one of the first versions of this website back in 2003.  The lesson?  Always back up copies of those important photos.

Black skimmers are truly a unique looking bird.  The have a special beak that allows them to feed by flying quickly along the surface of the water latching onto any small fish they encounter.  Doesn’t seem like a very efficient method to me, but it sure seems to work for them.