Paul Rebmann Blogs

Mushrooms Among the interesting things in nature that I have found to photograph are mushrooms. They come in many shapes, sizes and colors and are ephemeral in that what we see popping up out of the ground or attached to wood is only the fruiting bo... 

Several years ago I finally visited one of the east central Florida’s birding hotspots in Brevard County. Still widely known as Viera Wetlands, it was officially named Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera in honor of a longtime employee at the... 

Green Sea Turtles The last day of this past July started off with a pleasant surprise when I saw the Volusia Turtle Patrol marking a new sea turtle nest in front of the house. I went down to check it out and took some photos of the nest and the trac... 

Middle Suwannee River The Suwannee River flows nearly 250 miles mostly through Florida, from the Okefenokee Swamp in south Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico. I have been most familiar with the upper section of the river from just south of the Georgia st... 

My local Florida county – Volusia – is sponsoring a monthly nature challenge at a different county preserve each month on iNaturalist. According to the challenge coordinator Trey Hannah “The Explore Volusia Challenge was designed to get people... 

Volusia County Endangered Ferns Back in October I did a presentation on Endangered Plants of Volusia County for Halifax River Audubon featuring 21 of the 36 plants that the Florida Plant Atlas lists as endangered and having been vouchered for Volusi... 

Since spring has arrived in Florida, I thought that a look at a few of the wildflowers that can be found at the beach would be a nice subject for this month. Only certain plants can survive in the salt spray and intense wind of the high energy Atlan... 

Decades ago when I lived and worked in Knoxville as a radio broadcast engineer I spent some time (but not enough) in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Last spring I returned to the Smoky Mountains with my best friend Daniel and my brother Bob... 

Best of 2021 For my end of year blog post, I thought I would review my six favorites of the images made this year and posted for sale. I admit that I am partial to the native green anoles in my photography, but I was so pleased with the background... 

At 3:31 am on Sunday August 12, the Parker Solar Probe was launched on a Delta Heavy rocket. Getting up extra early for the second day in a row, as the previous launch attempt was scrubbed, I captured the launch from Ormond by the Sea. This photogr... 

Now is the time for action to reunite the Great Florida Waterway. The Great Florida Waterway is made up of the Silver Springs, Ocklawaha and St. Johns Rivers. The Great Florida Waterway is interupted in the middle by the Kirkpatrick Dam and Rodman... 

I have three entries in the 2021 Pixels/Fine Art America Billboard Contest. My most popular photograph - Heading Out To Sea Fine Art America link to vote for Heading Out To Sea Another highly popular of my images - Cooter on Alligator Log Fine A... 

Stay at home orders and self-quarantine to prevent the spread of Coronavirus has disrupted everyone's routines this spring. Virginia & I were lucky in that our family spring camping trip to Paynes Prairie State Park was the week before all the Fl... 

For me one of the highlights of a Florida spring is the appearance of pawpaw blooms. Pawpaws are members of the Annonaceae family, the custard-apples. There are currently a dozen known species of Asimina (the pawpaw genus) in the sunshine state p... 

I thought that I would start out the new year by showing you some of my favorite photographs from places that I visited over the past year. Looking back it was a very active and enjoyable year, starting with New Year's camping at Collier-Seminole ... 

Every year the Orange Audubon Society conducts the Kit & Sidney Chertok Florida Native Nature Photography Contest. The contest is named for the Chertoks who moved to Orlando in 1985. Sidney Chertok had numerous skills and interests during his life, ... 

This month marks the 500th anniversary of the founding of Havana, Cuba. Spanish conquistadors held mass and the first city council meeting under a ceiba tree on November 16, 1519 creating La villa de San Cristóbal de La Habana. The ceiba tree is m... 

I have backpacked different parts of the Florida Trail from the Rodman Dam to Clearwater Lake in the Ocala National Forest on several occasions, but there was a section between Salt Springs and Juniper Springs that I had never done. This March I cl... 

Just by chance dragonflies became one of my primary photographic subjects recently. It started with a birding trip to Canaveral National Seashore, during which we saw more butterflies than birds. One of these was a new butterfly for me, a male Ju... 

In February of 2019 Virginia & I had the opportunity to visit Cuba as part of a people-to-people exchange tour. Note that as of June 2019 these tours and day visits by cruise ships are no longer allowed by the United States. The first day of t... 

Mangroves are a group of plants with a shared common name that has more to do with where and how they grow than with their family or genus relationships. Mangroves are shrubs or trees that are halophiles, meaning that they can grow in salt water. ... 

Summer vacation With the passing of Labor Day marking the end of summer from a cultural perspective, though not quite the closing of the season in either a meteorological or astronomical calendar, I thought summer vacations would be a fitting su... 

Last fall as an important project at my day job was coming to a close, I mentioned to my friend Daniel that I had some vacation time I needed to take before the end of the year and we began discussing possible outdoor trips. Considering various kaya... 

William Bartram was born in 1738 in the family home (pictured here at the end of March) overlooking the Schuylkill River near Philadelphia. His father was John Bartram, widely considered the Father of American Botany and co-founder with Benjamin Fra... 

The Sarraceniaceae is a family of carnivorous plants known as the pitcher-plants. Members of this plant family have modified leaves that form a pitcher of various shapes and colors that traps and digests insects. This allows these plants to thrive ... 

This is the first in a series of posts that will focus on images in the Only in Florida exhibit, now on display in the Lyonia Gallery in Deltona. Bigflower Pawpaw, photographed in the Lyonia Preserve, Deltona, Florida. In 1774 while traveling ... 

Now that winter has actually arrived, both here in Florida and in points north, I want to look back at just last month when much of the eastern United States was experiencing temperatures that could be used as a textbook example of 'unseasonable'. ... 

With the year coming to a close I looked back at the photographs that I made over the past twelve months and picked some of my favorites to share with you here. Last December this "View from Blood Mountain" presented itself near the end of my ... 

The photography of Paul Rebmann is being shown in two public venues. The Halifax Historical Museum is featuring the exhibit "Our Natural World Around Us" and one of the entrance displays at the Ormond Beach Library will be filled with Wild Florida... 

The nature photography of Paul Rebmann was the subject of a profile earlier this year in Florida Verve, an online art and culture magazine. You can read that profile at Florida Views: Paul Rebmann's Nature Photography. 

There are many interesting spiders that can be seen in Florida. I will show you a few of them and their webs. One of the largest and very common spider is the golden-silk spider. This member of the orb-weavers family is also often called banana ... 

Florida is home to over a hundred orchid species, making up about half of the orchids found in North America. Many may think of orchids as being a tropical plant, but orchids are one of the most diverse plant families and can be found almost anywh... 

My 'on the water' photography has increased greatly the past 4 years since purchasing a sea touring kayak that I found on Craig's List. Prior to this most of my paddling had been in a canoe. I acquired the kayak to allow me to go out on solo photogr... 

After my April 8 tweet '7 years ago today' of a Carolina satyr butterfly - view original tweet Dr. Andrew Warren (@AndyBugGuy) of the University of Florida McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity contacted me asking if I had more photos of ... 

Since we are over a quarter of the way through 2014, I thought I would explain my "...years ago today" tweets. Since the beginning of 2014 almost every day I have posted on twitter.com/WildFlPhoto a photo that was taken on that date sometime in the ... 

A very wet native plant field trip this May resulted in my seeing two butterflies that were new to me, including the rare Schaus' swallowtail. This trip to Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park was one of many activities during the F... 

Sweet acacia is a native shrub to small tree of the southern-most band of states from Florida and Georgia west into California. It is closely related to the iconic trees of the African savanna landscapes, including the umbrella thorn acacia. Fo... 

One of the more frequently seen rails is the sora. These small, thin, chicken-like birds inhabit both freshwater and brackish marshes and other wet places throughout Florida in the winter. The winter range also extends along the coast of the southe... 

One of the more common butterflies seen in Florida is the gulf fritillary. This is one of the longwing butterflies (Heliconiini tribe), a subgroup of the brush-footed butterfly family (Nymphalidae). Other longwings found in Florida include the stat... 

Exploring nature can be fun and full of surprises, such as discovering one of the many varieties of mushrooms that are often found in the woods. The huge mushroom pictured at the top of this post was about a foot and a half across. and is called a Be... 

On August 21, 2017 a unique opportunity occurred for a vast number of North Americans to witness a total solar eclipse. The last total solar eclipse visible in North America was in 1991 when the path of totality passed over Mexico and before that in... 

The last week of July found me on most mornings observing and photographing the many spiderling plume moths that were flying around and perching on a patch of red spiderling plants in our yard. It was a fitting coincidence that this was also Nationa... 

Recent declines in monarch butterfly migrations and problems with honey bee populations, particularly colony collapse disorder, have raised awareness about the importance of these and other pollinators. One week each June is designated National Poll... 

For the past several years Virginia and I have had marsh rabbits living in our 'front yard'. I was surprised to learn that they will inhabit the beach dunes since I had usually seen them in proximity to the intercoastal waterway. Marsh rabbi... 

One of the many cool things about living in Florida is experiencing Sandhill cranes. We have two distinct populations of these majestic birds in the Sunshine State. About five thousand Florida sandhill cranes live here year-round and are consider... 

Clasping Warea is a rare Florida endemic wildflower that occurs only in central Florida. The ideal habitat for this endangered plant is longleaf pine sandhill. Sandhill is a high and dry pine forest with an open savanna-like understory that is ty... 

Along with pines, oaks and tupelo one of the typically 'Florida' trees is the cypress. Florida has two species, the bald cypress and the pond cypress. Pond cypress is limited to the Southeastern coastal plain from Louisiana to Virginia, plus Dela... 

Rodman Reservoir was created by damming a section of the Ocklawaha River as part of the abandoned cross-Florida barge canal project. Even though the canal project was cancelled before completion, and the path of the canal is now the Marjorie Harris ... 

Florida ranks as the fourth highest state in the number of endemics, species that are limited to a particular geographic area. Only California, Hawaii and Texas have more unique species than The Sunshine State. Early botanists exploring Florida suc... 

Many of you have heard that outdoor retailer REI has announced that they will close their stores on Black Friday and pay their employees encouraging them to spend the day outdoors in a campaign called #OptOutside. At least one other outdoor sports ... 

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of going on on a small motorboat to Lake Disston in nearby Flagler County. This state designated Outstanding Florida Water has been on my list of places to go kayaking, so when my day job boss's husband and fello... 

In my years of photographing wildflowers I have found that Florida State Forests provide some of the best locations to locate interesting subjects. The 37 state forests in Florida comprise over a million acres of land. The forest service manages ... 

Florida's Ocklawaha River flows north 74 miles from Lake Harris in Lake County passing through Marion County and along the western border of the Ocala national Forest, ending in Putnam County, entering the St. Johns River just upstream of Welaka. ... 

Each year since 2001 the non-profit organization Operation Migration has used ultralight aircraft to lead that year's juvenile whooping cranes from the breeding grounds in Wisconsin to Florida for the winter. After being shown the migration route on... 

One of the highlights of the local Ormond Scenic Loop and Trail is the Fairchild Oak, a majestic live oak tree estimated to be over 400 years old. This tree is located in Florida's Bulow Creek State Park and was named for botanist Dr. David Fairchild... 

In 2007 my image of a Great Horned Owl titled "Don't Mess With My Chicks" won 3rd Place in the Florida Birds! category of the Orange Audubon (Orlando Florida) Kit & Sidney Chertok Nature Photography Contest. This is the story about how I made this ph... 

After communicating only virtually up until then I finally met Florida children's book author Christopher Tozier in person when we both attended the fifth annual Florida Scrub Jay Festival at Lyonia Environmental Center & Preserve. Christopher Tozie...