Glass and Dogs
Tonight, I managed to break a glass container while washing it. I can break glass or crystal faster than anyone on the planet. It was in the sink while I was cleaning it, but the glass pieces wound up on the floor. Regis hurt his arm fixing my tire a couple of weeks ago and cannot walk both dogs at the same time. I took the dogs for a walk while he cleaned up the glass. This leads to an amazing ability I have. I can attract a bicyclist whenever I walk both dogs at the same time. If one of the dog poops and I stoop down to get it, 100% of the time, a bicyclist will come by. Raven could have a firecracker shoot off next to his head and he wouldn’t flinch, but a bicyclist makes him apoplectic. For reasons I cannot understand, EVERY time I walk both dogs by myself and one poops, a bicyclist will come by while I am cleaning up. 100% of the time.
Merry Christmas to everyone.
Royal Tern
In the last post, I showed an image of a banded royal tern that I photographed while kayaking in Moultrie Creek. I reported it and found the royal tern was originally banded in July of 2024 near Brunswick, Georgia. I think it is amazing to find out where these birds were originally banded and how they move around. If you are a photographer and capture images of banded birds, I encourage you to report them.
Blogging Again
Over the past several months, numerous people have asked that we start blogging again. We blogged for 10 years and I sometimes I miss it. This is to let you know that we are starting back up.
I want to start by saying the collies are doing well. Now that it is December and the weather is cooler, they are happy and spending more time outside. We have an abundance of squirrels right now which keeps the dogs busy. While outside, their favorite place is in front of the gate which gives them a good view of the world in front of the house where the delivery trucks, bicyclists, cats, and muscovy ducks keep them entertained.
Regis continues to work on his boat. Isn’t that what boats are for? He is taking me out regularly to do bird counts on the Tolomato River. I bring friends along when they are available. It is a joy to get out on the water and live in the moment. We have an abundance of American oystercatchers along the river and many are banded. I try to photograph every banded bird and submit any pics I get to the American Oystercatcher Working Group database. When I do, I get to see where the bird was first captured and banded and any sightings since then. One of my favorite sightings was a chick I photographed on May 28, 2021 the day after it was banded. I later saw the bird again on September 17, 2025.
I was the compiler for the St. Augustine Christmas Bird Count. Sixty-four of us counted birds in the St. Augustine Circle on December 14. I was on a boat and we saw many oystercatchers and tried to get pictures of all of them. It was a great day with great people.
I recently kayaked on Moultrie Creek with two of my fellow lazy kayakers. I photographed a royal tern while it was diving for a fish and when I got home was thrilled to see it was banded and I can read the band.
This black-bellied plover is searching for food at low tide. In breeding plumage, the males have a distinctive black belly.
I watched a white ibis eat a crab. It works the crab until it has no more legs and then swallows the rest whole.
This short-billed dowitcher has food in its bill.
This great blue heron is showing off its beautiful long feathers on its chest.
Our Blog
This will be our final blog post. We have written over 1,000 posts since 2015 and are ready to focus on other avenues for our photography and videography. Linda is spending more time teaching birding and photography and producing nature related videos. Regis continues his photography pursuits in between boat projects. We encourage you to follow us on YouTube and Instagram.
We deleted all the old blog posts. With 1,000 posts that included many photos, we were taking up a lot of storage space. We chose to reduce our footprint in order to reduce our costs.
We are sending a heartfelt thank you to all of you who shared our journey over the last 10 years. As I was copying the posts to save them on our storage device, it was like watching my life pass before my eyes. I was exhausted from being reminded how much we did in so little time. We enjoyed the comments you provided and you kept us going.
It was also nice to see how photography improved over the years. That improvement in photos and videos is allowing us to stretch ourselves and expand our capabilities. I recently produced my first narrated video. This was hard and I need to work on the sound and narration quality for future videos, but it was a major step for me.
Our YouTube channel has been growing and there is no cost to us to post most of our work there. I plan to use Instagram more now that we are retiring the blog. We are retaining our website. Information on courses, books, videos, prints, etc. will remain available on the site. If, for some reason, we have to port to another provider, we retain the domain names and we will still be here at http://www.landrtravels.com and http://www.lindaburekphotography.com.
We appreciate you and hope you continue to follow us on our other platforms.
Linda Burek Photography 