Cockroach Bay Preserve . . .
We purposely went there at the end of the day, about an hour before sundown. Priscilla and I had seen spoonbills sporadically in the wetlands along the road before, but this day we were pleasantly surprised by 18 beautiful pink birds! Soon after we arrived they started flying one or two at a time to a group of trees about a quarter of a mile from where we were standing. Darn, they were flying further away and we had lost a lot of light already, when suddenly several of the waning rays danced across the trees for just a moment -- that’s when I took this picture.
How it got it's rather off-putting name: Horseshoe crabs were once so abundant along the shores of Florida’s west coast that early Spanish explorers called them cockroaches, believing them to be seagoing cousins of the insects. Many people believe that is how Cockroach Bay received its unlikely name.
How it got it's rather off-putting name: Horseshoe crabs were once so abundant along the shores of Florida’s west coast that early Spanish explorers called them cockroaches, believing them to be seagoing cousins of the insects. Many people believe that is how Cockroach Bay received its unlikely name.