For an entire week of travel in Africa, we had heard nothing other than how the wildebeest migration wasn’t happening. Rains had come to the south, grasses were dry in the north, and prescribed burns in Tanzania were said to be dissuading these famed antelope...
Let’s face it, birders can be a serious bunch. There are both written and unspoken rules that garner more than just glares if broken - God forbid you point or wear white boots. I’m pretty sure laughter is generally frowned upon as well. Yet it...
It started as a rustle in the carpet of dried leaves, a distant whisper in Rwanda’s foothills barely audible above the squeaks of towering bamboo as woody neighbors rubbed against one another in an unsynchronized symphony. One of our guides paused, staring intently into the...
It was my second day gorilla trekking in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park and I thought I knew the gig. My first hike, in the medium difficulty category, had been an easy stroll through bamboo and montane forest into an open glade where our assigned gorilla...
On land the town of Steinhatchee offers visitors little more than a food mart, gas station, and a smoked mullet stand, but on the river things are different. Marinas are well-equipped, the public boat ramp runs like clockwork and every accommodation is booked from June...
Bold blue and yellow flowers, as well as delicate pink and purple, peeked through brown grass. South Florida’s native blueberry offered small but luscious fruits. Young, new leaves promised renewal of a cowhorn orchid that was thought to have been lost to the previous year’s wildfire....
I wanted to visit Dry Tortugas National Park long before I understood what or where it was. It sounded exciting - a tropical island far removed from the rest of the Florida Keys and an oasis for marine and bird life. It sounded like my...
An olive branch decorated in cheeses and sweets for Palm Sunday in Positano, Italy. Olive branches on Palm Sunday? I was intrigued by the concept even before I discovered that the branches were to be festooned in small salamis, miniature cheeses, and occasionally a fresh fish....
Our goal was to see 100 bird species in and around Everglades National Park by the end of the day - The Fifth Everglades Century Day by a core team of Floridians and Marylanders. We’d succeeded on our last venture, eking out a couple of...
My first post-Hurricane Irma trip to the Keys was in early December. There were still a few signs of the storm in Miami - walls crumbled by giant trees whose roots had gathered the surrounding earth and raised it to the sky in their sinking;...