We left England on Thursday in freezing weather - but just before the snow that might have disrupted our flight, and here we are in Florida expecting lovely warm sunshine. And what happened? The beautiful hot days they were experiencing last week changed abruptly to a measly ten degrees this morning! Nevertheless my young friend and I spent the day at Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park looking at West Indian Manatees. We took a load of great photographs as well, but having got back to our hotel I find my new camera won't connect to this iPad! Curses!
In the wildlife park we were taken on a pretty little boat ride through a slowly meandering natural springs waterway till we came to a lake where the manatees live. They don't poke much more than their noses out of the water to breathe so it's quite difficult to catch more than a glimpse of them except for the occasional sight of a big flat tail, although we saw scores of these lumbering but friendly creatures in the lake.
Just had a thought. Maybe my camera will connect with my young friend's laptop. If so I'll post a few pictures now.
This is a manatee - and yes, my clever young friend has solved my problem. And for anyone else who has had a similar problem you need to change the settings on the camera itself so it doesn't charge when connected to a USB port. You can still charge the battery of course in the usual way.
So to carry on. Here are a few of the photographs I took today - and as we are in the USA have a look at this very patriotic symbol of America standing in front of the country's flag.
My attempts at photographing one of the manatees were pretty pathetic but at least I managed this one showing both her tail and snout. I say her because it is said that in years gone by when sailors had been to sea for years on end and sighted a manatee they thought it might be a mermaid!
Now to a small selection of some of the animals and birds we saw today.
And here's the man who keeps a watchful eye on the many manatees in case they get wounded by a passing boat.
