four baby alligators at Myakka
Baby Alligators at Myakka River State Park

More From Myakka River State Park

Photos In Myakka River State Park

For the past several months I’ve been assembling a book of photography from Myakka River State Park, including landscapes, details, and wildlife. At the end of October, when the park’s flooding finally subsided, I made a trip to Florida to spend another couple of weeks gathering images of things that I felt I’d missed before.

One of the things that was missing, I thought, were macro shots, so this time I made sure to bring along a Canon 100mm f/2.8 IS Macro lens, which allowed me to capture some spiders, blooms, and other details.

Jumping Spider in Myakka
The iridescent colors of a common jumping spider in Myakka can be striking. Matthew Gore

While exploring a field of sunflowers below a pine grove with the help of former park biologist Paula Benshoff, I found a couple of pretty little critters among the blooms…

pine woods tree frog on sunflower bloom
A pine woods tree frog waiting for it’s next meal to buzz along.
green lynx spider
A green lynx spider.

One of the birds that can be found in Myakka is the Northern Caracara. It’s common range is in South and Central America, but it can be found along the dry prairies near Myakka, a bit of the gulf coast of Texas, and nowhere else in the USA. I saw two of them (or perhaps the same one twice) while I was in the park this November. I was lucky enough to be carrying a Canon 400mm f/4 DO IS lens, but I wanted a little more reach, so I removed it from my 5D Mark III and stuck it on my backup body, which is an old Canon 60D. The 60D, being an APS-C with a 1.6x crop factor, makes it in to a 640mm f/4 lens, giving me great detail in the bird’s face.

Northern Caracara in Myakka River State Park
Nothern Caracara, easily visible in a dead tree near the Myakka Prairie.

I shot hundreds of gigabytes worth of photos over those two weeks, from the swampy river’s edge and deep into the open prairie, too many to post here, but many will be available in print later this year.

Questions? Comments?

If you have any questions about my images or about Myakka River State Park in general, let me know in the comment section below… I may be able to help!

 

Editor-in-Chief
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments