About Me

I am a corporate employee during the week retired in the Tampa bay area. I love spending my time outdoors hiking and taking pictures of birds and nature. I have a Nikon D7500 camera. My primary lens is a Nikon 300 F4 for birding and Nikon 70-200 F2.8. Other lenses I use less often are  Nikon 80-400, Nikon 24-120 mm, Nikon nifty 50mm, Nikon Macro 85mm and Sigma 10-20mm (for landscapes).

Thanks for stopping by!

26 thoughts on “About Me”

  1. I was looking at your blog & pics. Just wanted to let you know there are new baby geese (2) at Crescent Lake. There were 3 but 1 went missing today. Also there is 1 maybe 2 more mama geese sitting on eggs. Just thought you may be interested. Lovely work!!

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  4. Dina, I must apologize for not recognizing you as a follower sooner!!! I can see that I’m going to be loving your blog. And, your pictures beat mine all to heck. But then the D7000 trumps a little old D60 anytime!!! Neverthesless, thanks for following along and I’ll be doing the same.

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  7. Hi! I love your photos. We seem to go to a few of the same places. Have you heard if there are owls at Kapok this year??

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  9. Hi Dina, thank you for visiting my blog. I decided to check yours out and I love it. As you probably know, I love photographing birds, as you do. I have subscribed to yours and I will be looking forward to your great work.

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  10. I have been enjoying reading you posts for quite a while now. Your photos are wonderful. I am looking to get a better lens. Just wondering what you are using for your photos?

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  11. Hi Dina Just discovered your blog through WBW. You are a fantastic photographer. I haven’t seen all your work yet but your past few posts are amazing. I do not know how to leave a comment on your posts. Is there a simple way? Looking forward to seeing much more. Margaret

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  12. Sorry if my english is not very good I speak spanish and I did not want to stop writing to you. I am a nature lover and a beginner in photography but it isn’t necessry know much to stand out the beautiful pictures you take and your ability to capture the right moment. It’s amazing what you do just for the love of nature. Thanks for sharing it.

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  20. Had a leucistic EUCD in Mangrove Bay neighborhood last week (june 2019), accompanied by a more usual plumage bird FYI.

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  21. Your posted photographs of 27 Sept 2018 included 2 shots of a crab with a barnacle attached. I believe the crab is Speckled Swimming Crab, Arenaeus cribrarius (Lamark, 1818) and the barnacle is Symbiotic Acorn Barnacle, Chelonibia testudinaria (Linnaeus, 1758). Would you send me the locality and date you took those 2 photographs? Thank you.

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  22. Hi Dina, My husband and I LOVE you photography so much. Your owl photos deserve an award, they are absolutely amazing! We are at Fort Desoto right now, trying so hard to find the old OWL NEST. I know there are no owls on it now but we wanted to at least find that special Oak tree. Can you give us an idea where at tree is located. Thank you do very much and please keep taking and sharing your incredible photos of nature. Sincerely Marilyn Piggott, Pinellas Park

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    • Thanks! The owls move around each year. They usually take over an old osprey nest. Last year they were on a nest on the East Beach trail but I think most of that nest has fallen down.

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  23. Dina: I found your post entitled “Real snow birds in Florida” posted 1/29/22. My wife and I, who live near the location, also viewed and photographed the Snow Geese, since we had previously seen one, a juvenile, at the Myakka River State Park weir below Lake Myakka on Thanksgiving weekend in 2019. We lived in Fort Lauderdale at the time, but now live here on the bayfront. We recognized this pair as Snow Geese immediately after they showed up in St. Pete at the North Shore Park beach, which was later confirmed at the eBird site for the locale. Your post appeared as a search result because I was interested in the snow geese, and was hoping to see them show up somewhere else on eBird sighting sites, somewhere else in central or southern Florida, if they had moved on. You may already know this but I found a citation acknowledging the rescue by “Birds in Helping Hand” (“birdsinhelpinghands.org”) at “https://www.facebook.com/birdsinhelpinghands/”. The birds were reportedly taken to the Raptor Center of Tampa Bay, where both were treated. The male was deemed emaciated and reportedly died soon after, but the female was flown to Alabama by a volunteer pilot, put in the hands of a veterinarian there, where she was to be released as in “good health” into a flock of 1500 snow geese nearby. We had never seen the male in any distress when we were photographing both of them, right up to the 31st. Of course, I do not know the actual date of “rescue.” It occurs to me that something must have happened suddenly. Having watched them over the previous week, we had thought they disappeared the morning of Jan. 1, as a result of the city’s fireworks display New Year’s Eve, since they were not on the beach the next morning, nor any time thereafter. Well, that wasn’t the reason, obviously. I wonder if sometime in the last couple days, the male consumed something toxic on the beach or when “dabbling.” We had seen the geese eating beach grasses or dabbling in the bay shallows right up to the day or so before disappearance. Our pictures, taken as recently as 12/30 or 12/31, do not show the male as emaciated at all, just like in your pictures, which were wonderful. By the way we loved your post. P.S. Have you been keeping up with the Manatees on Coffee Pot Bayou, where the water pipe in the seawall drains from Crescent Lake, near the boat docks at 23rd Ave. NE on Coffee Pot Blvd.? (That is, before the weather turned cold over the past week or so; when they haven’t been around lately). We were entranced one day by “Roll Over Beethoven,” the manatee we named because it kept rolling over to display both top and bottom over a period of 10-20 minutes, accompanied by a larger manatee which did not do that. We have numerous pictures of the smaller manatee doing that, with maybe 20-30 seconds of interval between rollovers. Who needs go to the TECO plant across the bay, when the “entertainment” is right here in Coffee Pot Bayou? And they are as close as 6-10 feet away at the drain location. Ben

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  24. Dina:

    We recently saw Great-tailed Grackles in the Sarapiqui region of Costa Rica.in April 2023. If you haven’t been to Costa Rica yet, or recently, my wife and I recommend it highly We have been 10 times since 1988 and are scheduled to go again next April. Now that you are retired, Costa Rica should be a must-see. Upwards of 400+ species of birds to see, including oodles of hummingbirds, depending on where you go in the country. And you possibly haven’t seen the colorful squirrels that occur in Costa Rica, nor the Resplendent Quetzal, in season in April and months before and after. Brenda got pictures of Quetzals this year near the Cerro de la Muerte Mountains in the Savegre area, south of San Jose. We saw no errant Snow Geese this Winter on North Beach Park bayfront nor in Myakka State Park near Sarasota. Absolutely love your photo work and commentary. It makes our day!. Ben & Brenda

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