Readers’ wildlife videos

Today we have two videos from Tara Tanaka, who has been absent a while due to a drought Florida that dried up much of the wetlands on the family property, creating an absence of wading birds that she used to feature. Fortunately, as she writes below, the drought may be over.  In the meantime, we have a kayaking video and a video featuring a BOBCAT.

Tara also has a Vimeo site and a  Flickr site.  Her narration below is indetned:

In 2024 when we had a swamp full of water, we got a sit-on-top kayak that I could use to shoot from and that my husband could use to get out into the swamp to manage exotic plants.  I chose this one because it’s incredibly stable, and I wanted an open deck to be able to paddle without having the camera in front of me.   This kayak has a seat that swivels 360 degrees, allowing me to mount my tripod with a 500mm lens in the stern, and then just pivot around between paddling and videoing.  This was the maiden voyage in our Nucanoe kayak. 

I was able to make quite a few trips out during the 2024 nesting season, and after a relatively dry winter and then one good rain, made a few trips out in 2025.  I stopped going out not because there wasn’t enough water to float the kayak, but because it was getting so shallow and our alligators that patrol the rookery for raccoons and snakes are so big that I didn’t feel comfortable paddling right over one with just a couple of feet between us.  It wasn’t long after that that a couple in a canoe in Lake Kissimmee paddled over an 11’ gator in 2’ of water causing the gator to thrash and overturn the canoe, with a tragic ending. 

The swamp has been dry for at least 9 months, with only a few pools of water, and now that it’s really starting to rain I’m hoping that the water level will return to normal and the birds will return to nest next spring. 

A 5-minute YouTube video, narrated by Tara, showing the maiden voyage of the canoe (sound up.)  You can see there are still birds around. Can you identify them?

And here’s a Vimeo video with an animal encounter. Enlarge this as you can see a lot more detail on full screen.

We had seen one or two coyotes around 9:30 the last two mornings. Hoping they would return for a third day. I got my camera ready in the living room to try to record them. About 9:00 my husband said he saw one, so I made some final adjustments for the lighting and began to search for something moving in the distance. When I finally centered the subject in the viewfinder, I said “I think I’m looking at a bobcat.” Almost immediately the cat stood up and as I panned with it I was shocked when two coyotes ran into the frame, one on each side of the cat. Enjoy the interactions between the two species and between the very bonded pair of coyotes. I believe the female is pregnant.

After I finished filming I just sat in disbelief that I had had the opportunity to record something so unique – and from my living room! I feel like I could have gone to Yellowstone and spent a month in the field and not witnessed an encounter like this. Because of the dramatic temperature difference between the thawing ground and the sun heating the brown grass, the waves of heat shimmer intensified as the sun got higher and you can see them rippling across the screen. Despite the extreme conditions, I was thrilled that I was able to record the interaction so clearly from 1000’ away, and through a double-paned window.

We should have a pond full of water with waders arriving to nest right now, however due to a severe drought that started over a year ago the entire swamp is dry. Without water to allow our large alligators to patrol under the nests and protect them from predators, I’m afraid that our hundreds of waders that nest here every year will not feel safe and will likely nest elsewhere.

Filmed with a Panasonic GH6 + Nikon 500mm f2.8 lens. Since I filmed it from inside the house, I used the audio from a video I shot from the yard last year.