Beautiful horses!

Remember the baby horse from last year?  She has grown into a beautiful horse. The first three are of her and with her mother.  I love the tenderness between both of them and was glad to be able to capture it.  Also included are some images that "screamed" for me to convert to black and white and also sepia tone, along with a funny image of a horse sticking his tongue out!  Enjoy!

 

...ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Over a course of a couple days, I watched two baby sparrows as they were fed by their parents.  I wondered as they brought food to the babies where in the world did they get the food?  It was so hot and the ground was so dry; but somehow they managed.  It's so cute when a baby bird opens its mouth up real wide!  Below are images captured during this feeding process. You'll notice one of the baby sparrows poking its head out from the right side of the birdhouse. Also, the last image is a male sparrow which I suspect might be the father.

Jace takes his family to the aquarium!

Our trip to Florida originally was to celebrate our great grandson's 1st birthday.  We bought a Tampa CityPASS which got us into five Tampa attractions to include the Florida Aquarium.  I wasn't sure if Jace would be old enough to enjoy the aquarium, but you will see by the images below that he enjoyed himself.  I'm glad I was able to get in a couple of the images with this time!

 

Riverlake Cottage in Homosassa, Florida

Before starting our cruise, we rented a cottage for three nights in Homosassa, Florida.  They had a pond where we fished and we also took in a boat tour on the nearby Halls River.  While fishing at the pond, I noticed this anole lizard with his throat puffed out orange.

 
The cottage had this pond fountain going 24/7.  It was real pretty at night! This is where we fished.

On our third night, we took a boat tour and saw quite a bit of wildlife.  Manatees are common in the area and this large one came near our boat.

Heading out on our tour... it was so beautiful and calm.  Tony, our boat captain, told us we were staying at one of the best places in Florida for viewing wildlife.

This egret let us get fairly close since he was watching the fisherman nearby waiting for a chance to get some fish.

This double-crested cormorant greeted us as we passed by. :)

This bird that looks similar to an eagle is an osprey.

I think this is a white heron.  The white herons and egrets look a lot alike.

Tony told us about an artist who owns this house and that he used his cut palm trees to hold birdhouses.

Here's a closeup of the birdhouses.

Tony is an experienced captain and he said this is the first time he ever saw a Anhinga bird and her babies in a nest.  I felt privileged to capture this sight!

Monkey Island was our last sighting on our tour.  There are actually live monkeys on this island but its hard to see them in this image.

Key West boat tour

Key West was our first stop on our cruise; however, I've listed our three cruise stops in order of enjoyment with Key West being the third.  We captured the following images during our custom boat tour.

I wonder if the folks who live on this house boat don't go on vacations but instead have staycations! :)

Waters in the Key West are very shallow with a lot of sandy tidal flats.  Everywhere we went on our tour, we could see the bottom as it was only a few feet down.

This blue heron flew away as we got nearer.  Mangroves trees are shown in the background.

Our tour guide took us to the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge but we didn't see a lot of white herons probably because it was in the heat of the day.

Out of all the images taken during our 11-day trip, the one below is one of my favorites; and due to the distance and speed of the boat, I captured this one with my iPhone instead of my Sony camera.

Since our stateroom was on the starboard (right) side of the ship, we were able to enjoy a beautiful sunset while leaving Key West en route to Havana, Cuba.