Frank B. (one of the original Photography Interest Group members) suggested we go on a photo outing. We settled on a trip to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and I’m glad we did.

Our first stop was the Titusville Marina for blue hour / sunrise. It was a calm and pretty morning and I like this B&W image of boats and reflections.

At the Marina

As we left the marina, fog started to roll in. You can see how thick it was in this photo of a boat on the river.

In the fog

We decided to go around Gator Creek Road first and ran into our first highlight of the day: American White Pelicans. There were several in the distance and more as we came around the last turn near Catfish Creek Trail. The header image is a wide-angle view of hundreds (out of maybe 1000+) White Pelicans gathered there (you can see a larger version of the header image here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/54318734094/in/photostream/). The fog made photography difficult. Here’s one showing some a lot closer.

American White Pelicans (2)

I’ve seen Wilson’s Snipes before, but in my experience, they’re almost always solitary. We saw small groups of them in a couple of spots along Black Point Wildlife Drive.

Wilson’s Snipe

You can often see a “bird feeding frenzy” over there, where a number of birds are going after minnows trapped in a small pond. This Great Egret was very successful and in nice light, too.

The plunge… A Great Egret hunting minnows on Black Point Wildlife Drive

The catch! We watched this bird for several minutes and it caught many minnows

A little further on Black Point, this Reddish Egret was chowing down too, but the light wasn’t nearly as good – although the reflections were awesome!

The Dance…

The catch!

The only Black Skimmer I saw that day made a single pass by us and kept going. I managed to make this quick photo.

Black Skimmer

Green Herons were common and this one was in some nice light.

A Green Heron fishing from the rocks.

And finally, another highlight from the trip. Just before the pavement starts at the exit from Black Point, we saw several people on the side of the road looking into the trees. It turned out that they were watching a Great Horned Owl nest.

A distant Great Horned Owl nest

It was pretty far away and we would never have noticed it if we hadn’t stopped and talked to them. As we were leaving I asked how they found it. They’d heard about it, went to look, and “stopped where all the people were”.

We also saw many ducks, a Belted Kingfisher, an American Kestrel, a Killdeer, and many other wading birds and alligators too. A great trip!

Blog note:

In May of 2025, this blog will have been on-line for 18 years, with almost 800 posts, and more than 2500 comments. That’s a good effort in blog land! It’s more than enough time to express just about everything I can think of to say about Central Florida Photo Ops. So I’ve decided to wind things down here and the blog will be off-line by September 2025 when my hosting plan expires. I doubt there are any posts or comments that readers are interested in saving, but if so please copy them before then.

I won’t be totally off-line. Even though I’m not photographing as much as I used to, I’ll still be going out and making images as often as possible. If you want to see what I’m up to, you can stop by https://flickr.com/edrosack, where I’ll keep posting.

Until September (and after): Many thanks to everyone for stopping by and reading my blog. You’ve all always been supportive and kind. Stay that way!

Take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can, make some photos!

©2025, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.