Michael Givant

Longboat Key, Florida February, 2014   On Mondays, after taking my wife to her bridge class, I go to a nearby 32-acre refuge. Early afternoon is when birds are resting but one recent afternoon I got lucky. A Long...

  Longboat Key, Florida Jan. 6th, 2014 It is 4:00 PM, the temperature is 57-degrees, the wind 22 mph and gusting higher. I’ve been birding all day through three dramatic weather changes. The worse the weather has gotten...

  Longboat Key, Florida Christmas Eve, 2013   Christmas Eve morning on the Longboat Pass drawbridge, where the Gulf of Mexico meets Sarasota Bay, the wind is unmerciful and the tide is very low. I’m walking this half-mile span...

Longboat Key, Florida Christmas Day   On Christmas Eve afternoon mullet, large gray plump fish litter Whitney Beach. All lay eyeless. Some resemble tightly wrapped sub-sandwiches, others have invasive holes, while some lay swathed in sand. None yet...

November’s moods start with honey, red, yellow and wine colored leaves and ends with trees almost as bare as a Thanksgiving turkey carcass. However this year it had a different ending a few days into December...

Longboat Key, Florida, Nov. 2013                              I was at the beginning of my return trip, walking over a half-mile drawbridge, when the words...

Last fall, after 23 years of birding with a lightweight pair of binoculars, I switched to a different pair and not without some trepidation. When looking at a bird you want to be thinking about...