I made my second ever visit to Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive this morning. It was extremely foggy and there wasn’t much sun at all for most of the morning. It was a little slow, but I made a couple of good finds that made it worthwhile. I actually ended up making 3 circuits through the drive between 7 and 12 today although the last one was a bit painful because there were too many cars and it is a one lane road with limited passing.

The highlight was the Peregrine Falcon that was unfortunately perched on a wire instead of a branch. Still cool to see as I have only seen a handful. If you didn’t know, the Peregrine Falcon is the fastest member of the animal kingdom and can dive at speeds around 200 miles per hour. I had a lot of Red-winged blackbirds posing for me which was nice and caught a beautiful bright red male Cardinal. The other highlight for me was the baby gators. There is a grouping of some that are probably a year or so and some that are maybe a few months old at most. I caught one of the really young ones hiding in the duckweed which came out to be some of my favorite gator photos I have taken. Finally, on the third round I arrived at a Great Blue Heron nest just as the male flew up. They went to work making some baby herons.