We have been busy. Arrived in Ft. Myers on March 22 to enjoy the company of Mom and Dad Woods and Frank and Brian Woods. Brian left that day but not before we enjoyed some conversation with another of the great Woods grandchildren. We stored our motorhome at Siesta Bay Resort and stayed at the Davidson/Woods condominium at Hertiage Cove. We relaxed and enjoyed more than a week there. We found a few year birds and even one life bird, a brown booby of all things, while there.

So it took us seven weeks to drive from Pennsylvania to Ft. Myers, the motor home doesn’t go that fast. The last piece of this long journey, from Sebring to Heritage Cove, was uneventful except showers. The rain was welcome here where the last year has been a dry one. The current weather results from a storm forming along the cold front that swept across the peninsula the day before yesterday. It reached down to the Florida Keys and there stalled. Cold fronts seldom cross the Florida Straights in late March!

Yesterday we visited the Kennedy Space Center. The admission fee is high, but NASA provides a good show. Many of the exhibits including a “rocket garden” are at the main visitor center. Buses take you past the famous vehicle assembly building, to a viewing station for the shuttle launch pads, and to the moon rocket museum that has the various units of a Saturn V rocket mounted horizontally overhead. This exhibit makes the building very long indeed.

The first bird we saw take off over the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge left with a flash. We stood on the bank of the Indian River at Marina Park with another hundred or so people at 2:28 this morning. We could see many more people standing along a causeway south of us. Traffic had remained steady on U.S. Highway No. 1 until a few minutes before. Now everyone was quiet and still. Then came a flash and the light flickered momentarily before a ball of fire slowly rose into view, accelerated quickly, and vanished after about ten seconds into a low cloud bank.

Moving south once again we toured the Savannah River National Wildlife Refuge from our motor home with auto in tow. We seldom attempt to bird this way. There are risks. Low hanging trees can force a turn around, and the double rig needs a large radius. Backing up is impossible. Still, worst case is to unhitch, turn around, and then have to reconnect. A nuisance certainly, but not the end of the world.

Okefenokee is the word Native Americans gave for this "Land of the Trembling Earth". It is a large wet depression in southern Georgia, with pine trees, cypress, live oak, palmetto and lots of water. We spent 2 days there. One, a canoe ride up the old Suwanee Canal that was built in the 1890's and the other a hike through the wetlands. When we started the latter, there was a sign that sections of the trail 'may be covered with water'. That was an understatement. Fortunately the 'Neos' we keep in the trunk of the car came in handy.

Almost noon and we are back inside. It has been a beautiful morning even if the temperature was only 30 at dawn and is now 43 degrees F. The sunshine is brilliant and the breeze light. We walked a trail through the dune forest and found two new year-birds. The first was a golden-crowned kinglet. This sprightly elf darts about in the foliage and characteristically flicks its wings. Racy wing bars and an eye stripes are field marks. It loves to stay hidden in foliage, especially during the breeding season. Here it is wonderfully more exposed even in the leafy live oaks.

We have made another move to another beach park in the Carolina “Low Country.” We enjoyed some five days at Huntington Beach. The weather varied from almost warm to quite chilly. The campground is relatively open, a wide clearing in a low pine back flat forest, and we chose an open campsite to collect as much sun as possible. Other campers backed their motor homes and tents under the gracious live oaks. Here the forest is a simple woods with a live oak, laurel oak, and loblolly pine canopy over an understory of yaupon holly, wax myrtle, and juniper.

We crossed into South Carolina today after five nights in Carolina Beach, NC. Our stay there was somewhat subdued after the exciting boat rides and weather at Hatteras. We departed there against squalls from a cold front and passed tornado-demolished houses as we worked our way south across the Coastal Plain. The cold front reached past Carolina Beach and we endured a cold wind the whole time we were there.

Our boat trip went out as scheduled yesterday, and as expected it was a bouncy ride. We thank the Lord for scopolamine patches. These pelagic birding voyages are humbling experiences. The some 22 passengers were all advanced or expert birders. Several had found more than 700 species in North America. Most had one species as a primary objective, the great skua. This is a Mack Truck of a bird, not really so large, but very thick and aggressive. These skua nest in the arctic of Greenland and Iceland and are on holiday in the winter.