Announcing the DeeMotivation 2014 Challenge!

I have decided to get next year's challenge out early so we can all get prepped (and by prepped, I mean clean out your cupboards.) Here is the official DeeMotivation 2014 Challenge for next year. Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

• Traverse 1000 miles self-propelled (this can include bike, stationary bike, treadmill, rower, kayak, snowshoe, however you want as long as it's self propelled.)
• Complete 1000 consecutive junk-free hours starting midnight January 1.
• Many people have mentioned that "junk" is subjective. So, it's up to you, this is the honor system. Some people are using a tracker such as MyFitnessPal or Tap and Track, for them, taking in more calories than they expend is the bench mark. I found myself obsessing about food more than usual when I used a program like that so I will be journalling on paper. 
• That said, I think we can all declare the following as "junk"
• Any food that has any HFCS at all
• Any food that has sugar as the first ingredient
• Anything from a fast food restaurant (burgers, fries, pizza, fried chicken)
• Candy, cookies, pie, cake, chips, soda, alcohol, donuts etc.
• (Optional) I am afraid that at 6:01 a.m. on February 10 (that is, 1000 hours), people will go nuts and eat everything in site. So, to help prevent that, if you want, send me $14.00 before the first of the year. The money will be split 70/20/10% among the top 3 who make it the longest AFTER the first 1000 hours. In the unlikely event that no one makes it to 1000 hours, all of the money will be donated to next year's Kidney Foundation walk fundraiser.  And, since we are all human, if you have a slip up, it is not the end of the world, BUT you do have to pitch in another $7.00 each time you slip up if you want to stay in the competition. Oh, and to show I'm not s total killjoy:
• You get 50 calories a day to do what you want. If you are doing an online tracker you still have to add them, but they won't count as a cheat. For example, I'll use this for my morning coffee.
• You get your birthday off. Nothing you do on your birthday counts.

If you are in, please let me know either here, by email or on Facebook, and if you are in for the wager, please either bring the money the next time I see you or snail-mail it to be before the first of the year.

Please note that this is all on the honor system, and you are responsible for tracking your own mileage.

We gonna do this thing? YES! GO US!

Kidney Foundation Walk

We did our second annual walk for the Kidney Foundation today. It was quite awesome! The weather was perfect. My only complaint was I walked a mile (literally, I had my Garmin with me) trying to find a rest room. The irony of not being able to find a rest room at the kidney walk was not lost on me. But it's all good, that left me with 4 miles wracked up today.

Our team raised over $650, and they said the total of all walkers was over $60,000. Thanks again to all who donated!

Here are some pictures from the walk. If you didn't GOYB, here's what you missed!

 Our whole team.

Me and aunt Kathy. I am insanely proud of aunt Kathy, she was the first to complete the 1000 mile challenge this year! We are already planning next years challenge. Stay tuned.

Cousin Amy, cousin Beth, and me.

Oh, and there's one more thing... In exchange for people pledging me, I let everyone purchase an interpretive dance. I had a lot of donors, but there were only 4 people who actually requested dances.

I had a lot of people who said they wanted to see the videos, but did not donate. That didn't seem fair to all of the people who did donate, so I decided to keep the videos private this year except for the people who donate. The good news is that if you want to see all of the videos, you can still donate by clicking here. If you want a taste of what is in store for you, here is just one of them:

Peregrine Falcons and St. Augustine

We had a great weekend in St. Augustine. On Saturday morning, we met up with friends Alison, Chad and Hobie to look for Peregrine Falcons. After dinner, David and I went back to the beach for some more bird watching. Sunday, we returned to the beach for more birding, met a friend for brunch, and on the way home we (surprise) stopped to go birding (do you sense a trend?) Very active and awesomely birdy weekend. If you didn't GOYB to join us for this awesome weekend out, here's what you missed (click to enlarge pix):

This was a dragonfly I spotted from the observation deck. We were specifically looking for Peregrines for Chad, and we saw a few, but none were particularly photogenic. Chad, Alison and Hobie were quite photogenic, but I got distracted by shiny things and completely forgot to take any people or puppy pix at the observation deck.

 When David and I went out to the beach late in the day, it had just finished raining where we were. This huge sail boat was off in the distance getting rained on but was still picturesque nonetheless.

 Mmmmmm HFC David looking as gloriously yummy as always.

This was a first for me! I've never gotten a picture of a pooping bird before! This is a willet.

 This was a greater black-back gull and his little friends.

 This was a life bird, a Frankin's Gull, which if you look closely, you can see that he looks exactly like every other stupid gull.

There was a huge flock of black skimmers, one of my favorite birds.

Sunday morning, we went out to a boat launch area. This tri color heron posed nice for me.

I don't do a lot of landscapes, but in case anyone wonders why I live in Florida, this is why. The colors are amazing at dawn. I didn't edit this photo at all.

 This was a brown thrasher who posed nicely for me. Actually, he wasn't so much posing as he was taking care of a personal issue. I don't even think he knew I was there stalking him with my camera.

 This was a boat tailed grackle.  It's a common bird, but I've always thought they are cool. I love the way his feet look in this picture.

 The boat tailed again. I love the iridescent blues and purples.

 Ponce DeLeon. It's a little known fact that in addition to discovering Florida, he is also the inventor of the "Pull My Finger" joke, as commemorated by this statue.

 My little sweetheart coming back from a long morning of birding.

 On our way to Jacksonville to meet a friend we stopped at Bird Island Park in Ponte Vegra. This is just an Anhinga, but I thought it was neat seeing the way he grips the branch with his feet, it's not something I've ever noticed before or got a good picture of.

We were driving home from lunch in Jacksonville when David got a call about a Willow Flycatcher at Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge.  We took a detour and spent a long time exploring the refuge and looking for the bird. David heard the bird. I never did, but I did find this incredibly adorable froggie.

It was an awesome weekend, aren't you sorry you missed it? Remember, you can look at pictures here or on TV but you really can't experience nature unless you GOYB and come out with us!

Keep coming back here for updates and announcements of our next adventures.

Wings and Wildflower Festival

Had an awesome time at the Wings and Wildflower festival the last few days. Met lots of great people, had a blast giving some talks, and I just realized now that I even got a life bird out of it all! If you didn't GOYB and join us this weekend, here's what you missed!

David and I led a walk though the trail at Hickory Point Park. There were a ton of insanely cool spiders out there, including this little gal, I think she is an orchard orb weaver but need to verify the ID.

This is just an artsy picture of a stump but I thought it was cool.

A shot of the orchard orb weaver's tummy.

On this walk, I decided it would be better to not mess with the bees. They were at the top of a tall tree, so that made it much easier for me. (In case you can't tell, the darkness beside the silver is a bee hive in the trunk of the tree.)

 This is a cool shelf fungus.

 This was a life bird for me - a yellow throated warbler. I've certainly seen them before but I guess I always assumed I already had a picture of one. So this is 286 for me on my photographic life list.

 This is me, starting my "Profoundly Unscientific Birding Identification" talk. Other than Patrick and the burrowing owl puppet, I made all the props, including Barney the barn owl, and a bunch of puppet type things that are laying beside me.

Abusing poor Patrick in the name of education. I am poking him in the eye with a great egret puppet to demonstrate how they have straight pointy beaks. As opposed to the ibis, who has a curved beak and therefore would have to stand on Patrick's head and bend over if he wanted to poke Patrick's eye (which I also demonstrate.)

One of my two Bill Meyer stories, I am demonstrating here how he taught me to identify palm warblers by the way they pump their tail up and down.


It was an awesome festival, met so many terrific people. Already looking forward to next year's!

In the coming months, I'll be working the Space Coast festival and leading a bird walk for a women in the wilderness meeting. Make sure you watch my schedule here and come on out for some fun. Remember, you can look at stuff on the internet or TV, but you can't really experience it unless you GOYB and join me!

Video from Hands Across the Lagoon

We had a great time out at the Hands Across the Lagoon Event. Here's the video that I made for it:
 

Event Update: Goodwin Wildlife Management Area: The Good, The Bad, and The Owie

The good: Had awesome weather for a bike ride and I was joined by the lovely and always interesting Christy Pruett. We saw lots of cool stuff. The official bird list from Christy was: Double-crested Cormorant, Anhinga, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Tricolored Heron, Little Blue Heron, Cattle Egret, Green Heron, Black-crowned Night-Heron, White Ibis, Gossy Ibis, Roseate Spoonbill, Wood Stork, Mottled Duck, Blue-winged Teal, Turkey Vulture, Black Vulture, Northern Harrier, Cooper's Hawk, Osprey, Peregrine Falcon, Common Gallinule, Sandhill Crane, Mourning Dove, Belted Kingfisher, Loggerhead Shrike, Barn Swallow, Tree Swallow, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Northern Mockingbird, Common Yellowthroat, Palm Warbler, Northern Cardinal, Eastern Meadowlark, Red-winged Blackbird, Boat-tailed Grackle, a deer and a snake.

The bad: I had a bad start to the trip. I was trying to top off my bike tires with air, and wound up spending $3.00 in quarters, and I accidentally let all the air out of my tires. I finally had to admit I didn't know what I was doing and I had to ask a little boy to fill my tires up for me. Duoh!! And even worse - don't tell David this - but once I got to Goodwin I realized that I had forgotten my binoculars. There is a reason I'm known as a very bad birder!

The owie: Once I finally got out to the park, I met up with Christy and we started off for a great ride, but then at the 3 mile mark, we stopped off at the tower to look out. The tower was a bit over grown, but we ascended with no problem. Coming down however, I accidentally ticked off some bees and they attacked us. Christy got out unscathed, and for all the cussing I did, I got out of it with only 2 stings. Unfortunately, one was on my knee, and I had still had to ride back 3 miles!

Here are the official pictures from the trip:

 This is a deer that just stood right beside us while I futzed with the camera. It was a little strange - I took this with the short lens. The deer was not afraid of us at all and just stood there watching us.

This was a cool owl pellet that Christy found on top of the tower.

This is Christy at the end of the bike ride.


Overall, the good far outweighed the bad, and any day outside birding with friends is always better than one stuck inside! Keep watching the web site and come out and join us for an outing soon!

Turkey Creek Video!

We had an awesome walk out at Turkey Creek today. I was joined by HFC David, and Suzy and Bob from Space Coast Audubon. Here's a video of some of the incredible stuff we saw out there today!