It's a Pelican, Right?

Pelican • Boynton Beach, Fla. • 2/29/16

We went to Florida a couple of weeks ago to stay for ten days and got back last week. February's the cruelest month in America's Northeast. Which is why so many of my buddies and neighbors become snowbirds... Most of them December through March. Work's never allowed us to do it, so their winter tans have always fed a lot of envy. Thanks to an invitation from friends, we finally took the AutoTrain on its overnight run from Virginia to Sanford, Fla. then drove down to the Palm Beach/Boynton Beach area.

It's weird to walk through bone chilling winter winds into the train's door, and walk out into mid summer. And since the ride's through darkness, you can't see the snow disappear and the palm trees sprout. It's as if you nod off in the arctic and awake in the tropics. It's kinda/ like a Twilight Zone thing.

Anyways... Tropics have their own beasties... Like this girl sitting beside our restaurant's dock in hopes that something tasty'll drop. She was about five feet away at twilight and easy to grab through my  Canon 7D's  EFS 17-85mm (f4-5.6) normal lens. Of course I snapped up the dynamic range in CCPC.