Basic Tips For Better Birding

Basic Tips For Better Birding

By Lisa D. Mickey Birds have a way of sending you back to your field guide, especially when winter migrants start soaring into Florida, landing on the pond behind your house and making you wonder exactly which bird you are seeing out your back door. That has been the...
Opinion: Make Your ‘Date With the Beach’ On July 5th

Opinion: Make Your ‘Date With the Beach’ On July 5th

By Lisa D. Mickey Independence Day is a festive time. It’s a mid-year summer month when Americans celebrate our freedom. As a child, I enjoyed 4th of July fireworks, particularly over baseball stadiums after games when the pops, fizzles and booms echoed off the...
Soundscape Project Serves As Reminder To Listen To Nature

Soundscape Project Serves As Reminder To Listen To Nature

By Lisa D. Mickey The spring of 2020 may forever be remembered as a season of fear and change when the Corona-19 virus roared across the globe in pandemic fashion and impacted many lives along the way. Businesses and schools closed their doors around the world, which...
Bird Rookery Islands Cleaned and Ready For Nesting Season

Bird Rookery Islands Cleaned and Ready For Nesting Season

By Lisa D. Mickey Just as it’s an annual rite of spring for the wading birds to begin displaying their breeding plumage on the rookery islands here in New Smyrna Beach, another annual occurrence is a task designed to benefit these amazing creatures. That task has...
Gopher Tortoise Halts MDC Construction, Prompts Relocation

Gopher Tortoise Halts MDC Construction, Prompts Relocation

by Lisa D. Mickey The Marine Discovery Center got a little surprise from a burrowing reptile after it had started construction this spring. Executive director Chad Truxall was walking the center’s campus in early April and noticed a hole in the base of what will be...
Bird Rookery Islands Receive An Assist From MDC Staff

Bird Rookery Islands Receive An Assist From MDC Staff

By Lisa D. Mickey MDC Staffers Charity, Wendy, Lois, and Lisa help clean the rookery island in February I reached above my head through the mangrove trees for the lifeless brown pelican hanging in the limbs of the bird rookery island. The beautiful bird was still soft...