I’m terribly behind on posting pictures. One picture of a poinsettia hardly covers the San Diego trip. But here instead is one of our first outings with the new T2i camera, to Paynes Prairie just south of Gainesville, in the last days of December.

This is not a grassland prairie. Almost everywhere has brush much taller than me. I believe this is a yellow-rumped warbler.

It was a delightfully warm day after a stretch of cold, and this may have been the first day the armadillos were able to rout about in a while. In any case, they were plentiful, and completely indifferent to our presence. Usually they have their head down sniffing about under the leaf litter, so they must not use their eyes much.

The new camera is very inviting and has a gorgeous screen on the back. Several killdeer were patrolling the trail, would fly a little ahead, we’d catch up, they’d fly a little farther, and finally, perturbed, fly over our head to land back on the trail behind us.

A green (?) anole.

Just a few feet rise in elevation from the prairie there are stands of sweet gum. A red-bellied woodpecker.

And then a few feet above that the oak and palmetto start back up. It was in here that we saw the wild horses that live in the park, albeit ones very accustomed to people walking by. They seem to be fending just fine, eating palmetto and acorns while we watched.