An overhead shot of three baby American alligators floating among the vegetation in a marsh.

A great blue heron nest sitting in a dead tree overlooking the marsh: one juvenile calls out while a second looks inside the nest and an adult scans the surroundings. #birds

In the early morning, a Cooper's hawk looks over its shoulder and through the bare branches of a tree to look back at me. #birds

A glossy ibis comes in for a landing onto a tree stump in the wetlands. #birds

A great egret tackling a siren it caught in a muddy drainage ditch. #birds

Every time I pass this marsh rabbit with a broken ear I am compelled to take its picture.

A blue-winged teal shakes the water droplets from its head after a second duck splashed it. #birds

And here's the juvenile great horned owl sitting amidst some oak foliage and looking down at me after rousing and begging for food around midday. Mom's reaction was to fly to another branch to return to sleep. Taken at 800mm and tightly cropped. #birds

An adult great horned owl looking down at me with half-lidded eyes from a large tree limb. #birds

Every time I pass this marsh rabbit with a broken ear I am compelled to take its picture.

A female northern harrier flying through a dull blue sky. #birds

Sometimes it's easy to forget why they're called double-crested cormorants because the tufts too often blend into the rest of their head (at least in populations where the tufts aren't white). But then the wind picks up. #birds

A cattle egret peeks over a paved trail from the edge of the marsh below during sunrise. #birds

A pied-billed grebe holding a crayfish in its beak while paddling about in the middle of the marsh. #birds

Baseball and birds intersecting. A moment I've been waiting for. Just wanna know what kind of bird it was.

A closeup of the face of an eastern ribbon snake.

A female pileated woodpecker climbing a tree trunk. #birds

The great horned owlet is getting bigger, has unsheathed more flight feathers since I last saw it two weeks ago, and is now hopping from branch to branch, even wandering into an adjacent tree. Here it is looking back at me from the middle of a flowering live oak tree. #birds

A Savannah sparrow perched nicely on a twig in the wetlands. #birds

The common gallinules were feisty the other day. #birds

Today is #WorldFrogDay, so here is a pig frog sitting in some shallow water surrounded by duckweed.

An American bittern hiding amongst the reeds in the marsh. #birds

A glossy ibis walking near a trail cutting through the wetlands. #birds

A pair of great egret chicks in a nest, one calling out with its neck stretched out behind its sibling's back. #birds

A closeup of a purple gallinule's face. #birds

Another shot of the two roseate spoonbill youngsters in their nest: the one in front has its wings spread out over the second's head in the background. #birds

The photo isn't great--I was shooting through fog into the sun--but I'd never before seen a black-crowned night heron nest. Here you can just make out three chicks ensconced in shadow nestled underneath their mother in a palm tree. #birds

A green heron giving the camera a prime view of its throat while it calls out. #birds

A Cooper's hawk stares out while perched in a bare tree against a background of green leaves. #birds

More roseate spoonbills at the nest: an adult looks back towards the camera, while the chick in the back investigates the bottom of the nest and the one in the front looks up at its parent. #birds

You've probably seen some photos of this roseate spoonbill nest in the Orlando Wetlands, because I've seen about 500 photos of it, and there were a couple dozen more photographers there snapping away while I was. #birds

An invasive gray-headed swamphen, its face illuminated by early morning sunshine, standing amidst the reeds at the edge of the marsh. #birds

A striped mud turtle looks up over the grass on the side of a trail on a sunny morning.

Many birds are molting right now, and molting requires maintenance. Fresh after fishing out some loose feathers from its wing, this pied-billed grebe sits with a feather lightly balanced atop its slightly agape bill. A second loose feather floats in the water beside. #birds

A yellow-rumped warbler perched amidst the reeds in the middle of the marsh early in the morning. #birds

A Carolina wren clings to a palm frond, ready to spring off. #birds

Perched above the nest was an adult great horned owl, lazily gazing from a tree top, bare save for tufts of Spanish moss. #birds

I don't particularly care which image is 'better.' But, especially in a field like wildlife photography where almost any image you could want to capture has already been captured, what a lot of people don't understand is that the act of making the image is what's special to the creator and audience.

Came across a great horned owlet this evening, sitting behind some twigs and Spanish moss amidst the resurrection ferns. The bird looked to be about a week to ten days old. A tight crop from an image taken at 800mm. #birds

A male cardinal standing in front of some palm fronds while perched atop a tree stump. #birds

A male downy woodpecker perched on a twig against a dark background. #birds

A female common yellowthroat in a tangle of dried out vegetation in the middle of the wetlands. #birds

A male common yellowthroat perched on a dry reed in the middle of the marsh. #birds

This is neat. The National Audubon Society used my contest entry from last year of a great horned owl and its owlet resting amidst a sea of Spanish moss in their annual gallery of baby bird photos: www.audubon.org/magazine/the...

A closeup of a sora's face. #birds

A male red-winged blackbird clinging to a dry reed in some misty rain yesterday morning. #birds

Before tossing it down its hatch, this anhinga really wanted to show off the bluegill it had caught. The bird had spent several minutes beating the fish against the rocks along the shoreline in an attempt to dislodge the fish from its beak after spearing it just below the eye. #birds

Guess who got his camera back from the shop. #birds

A yellow-throated warbler perched upon a mossy tree limb. #birds

Still without my camera, so here's one taken with my phone. No idea why there were two pumpkins in this dark, wooded stream, but there were.