I don’t have internet access on the dock. This has been a bit of an adjustment.

To pass the time (in between taking calls from tourists and selling tickets) I read. A lot. I write. Some. And I look around.

For hours, I look around.

And this week I’ve seen some pretty cool things.

1. An anhinga, also known to the Seminole Indians as the “snake bird,” swimming and diving–hunting for fish. After a few dives it caught this little fishy and shook it around for a while (I guess to disorient it). Then it tossed it in the air, opened wide, and swallowed it in one gulp. Then it hopped up on the dock and spread it’s wings to dry out. They have to dry out after long periods of swimming or their wings become too heavy with water to fly.

2. A school of fish. There were hundreds of them! Tiny silver things, darting this way and that, an occasional show off jumping in the air and splashing me with water. They stayed by my dock for much of the day and I watched them all afternoon.

3. A Little Blue Heron, hunting for food along the mud banks at low tide. He finally found a snake and tore. that. thing. apart. But not before a really good fight from the snake. (In the second picture you can kind of see the snake trying to wrap itself around the heron’s beak.)

4. Petey the Pelican. He’s a regular ’round our dock and was just chillin’ by our crabbing boat today, floating in the water, flappin’ his wings (did you know that the brown pelican is the largest of our sea birds with a wing span that can reach up to 7 feet?) … and flappin’ his beak.

5. A manatee! This was particularly exciting as manatee don’t generally live in our area. But every summer we get a couple who wander up, I guess from Florida, and make their way into our harbour. I was so caught of guard I gawked for too long before I jumped to grab my camera–which was at the bottom of my bag of course–and I didn’t get it out in time to get a great picture before it submerged and swam away. Hopefully you can kind of see it–it’s the brown log looking thing in the water. I’m hoping it’ll come back tomorrow so I can get a better picture. What a gentle giant.

6. The harbour in late afternoon. I love this time of day. The light is just beginning to turn a touch of golden and today the reflection was shimmering on the boats so beautifully. The sky was blue blue blue and it just looked so pretty I had to take a picture.

This job is great, wouldn’t you say?