Gopher Tortoise!

On our very first day here on North Captiva, the woman who gave us our tour of the island and took us out to our rental, pointed out a gopher tortoise. Carin told us that there were a lot of the tortoises on the island. So I sat there, not getting out my camera for a photo. It was, of course, the only tortoise we saw----up until this afternoon. Today we saw five different tortoises. It seemed that everywhere we went we saw them....coming back from Crabby Amy's, heading down our land (Escondido Lane), one lane to the north, everywhere! They even posed for photos and Nonie got some video of one that went speeding off into the underbrush. For a tortoise, they really are rather speedy. They sort of hurtle along. I think they are pretty cute and I love their toes.

And then there was the egret, who was hunting for his supper. And doing quite well, at it, too, thank you very much. He was hanging out in what I can only think of as the local compost pile. There is quite a heap of clippings and old palm fronds and apparently the little lizards (geckos?) hang out in the pile. This egret has found this a very good spot for hunting. I've seen it in there almost every day since we arrived, ususally in the mid to late afternoon. Today the hunting was excellent and the egret just went on dining and mostly ignored us.