The Beginning

Ain’t Nature Grand? ........................

Now when I say nature I am not necessarily talking about the weather aspect, my interests lie in the plants and critter side, like birds & butterflies, trees and flowers. I have also all my life had an interest in photography although I have never had any formal training it is still something I enjoy.

So this blog will be about my adventures poking around Broward County in Florida and discovering just what our local parks and wetlands have to offer. The reason I chose Broward County is because, I live in Broward Number one and secondly because I had subscribed to a couple of Florida Birding lists hoping to find where to look for birds in Broward and soon discovered that birds are posted for areas South of here and North of here and to our West but not much is posted about Broward especially in the area in which I live. Of course from time to time I will travel to other areas in Florida and on rare occasions to other US states (I Hope). My interest in nature goes back to child hood when I would go to visit my grandmother and she would pick a posy for me and I would always ask for another one had to have one for each hand.

My mother had a love for birds and always had bird feeders for the birds. So I guess I come by this naturally. When I married I and had children I too had birdfeeders in my back yard that is until I moved into my condo here and was shocked to learn that bird feeders were prohibited. I went in to bird feeding withdrawal and began looking for birds to watch on line at birdfeeder cams. One day I stumbled up on a forum about birds and most of those people had feeders in their back yards and it made me feel like home. The more I got involved with the forum the more I missed having back yard birds.

Then one day I decided, if I can’t have the birds come to me then I would go to the birds, and my trusty camera went with to bring back the memories to post on my computer.

This led to a Birding Forum to talk about birds and show off the birds I see. Then this led to my first web site which led to the present web site and the Smug Mug photo storage. Now I am attempting a Blog what’s next?As I stumble around I discovered some great places especially in Palm Beach County where birds are plentiful especially in the winter. I soon noticed that the birds became scarce in the summer and there were periods when I wouldn't see much at all and I began to search for the next best thing, Butterflies - which soon led to Dragonflies and before you know it anything that got in front of the camera became fair game.

So this is how it began and where it will lead me next is anyone’s guess but you can be sure that Mother Nature will certainly be involved.

Now I ask you “Ain’t Nature Grand”? ........................”

I think it is AWSOME!!!!”