Beauty and the Beast

the Beauty...





I'm often disappointed with photos that I take of beautiful flowers, but I really like this one. It looks like there might be a teeny light bulb sending out light from the center.


the Beast...





I took these photos today at the Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island. A very nice volunteer named Susan, told me that we might come across a crocodile as we biked along the wildlife road. She told us that we would be able to tell that it's a crocodile rather than an alligator because when its mouth is closed we would be able to see both its upper and lower teeth (as opposed to an alligator, where we would see only its lower teeth when its mouth is closed). Sure enough, when this one closed its mouth, we could still see all of its teeth. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of it with its mouth closed. We watched it for about 10 minutes and during that time it only closed its mouth a couple of times for a few seconds each time.





We really enjoyed our day there ... the bike ride along the Wildlife Trail this morning and a presentation by Bill Thompson and Julie Zickefoose this afternoon ...





Their presentation about Bird Identification was informative and funny and they even played a few songs. Apparently "real birders" wear their binoculars even while they are playing the guitar!


P.S. - the "Beauty and the Beast" title of this post only refers to the flower and the crocodile - not Julie and Bill!