Articles by: Into Nature Films

Flying Free

When birds are free to soar, we all thrive together. Egmont Key National Wildlife Refuge protects one of the largest remaining beach nesting colonies remaining in Florida. See the Friends of the Tampa Bay National Wildlife Refuges rescue birds entangled in fishing line. Learn steps to keep fishing line and hooks away from birds.

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The Fog of Birds

We believe we know birds because we give them a name. The red one is a Northern Cardinal. The tiny gray is a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher. The rainbow bird is a Painted Bunting. Do we even see them? If we look beyond ourselves, we can glimpse the sublime. Delight in not knowing.

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Two Lovers in a Pine Tree

Into Nature Films found two lovers sitting in a tree. While White-winged Doves are among the common birds, the tenderness of these two in the canopy of a slash pine is heartwarming. With exquisite crimson eyes framed by powder blue eye shadow, this pair displays behaviors that we all need-kindness and affection. There is a reason doves are a symbol of peace. Take a moment and delight in the ordinary. There you may find solace in the most common of things

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Palmetto Dance with Fire

Rick Anderson burns patches of his Florida Flatwoods each year. He is part of a long tradition of humans burning in Florida from Native Americans to pioneers, and now, land managers. The woodsburners of the world know the skillful use of fire brings renewal and diversity. They burn when the wind is quiet and the ground is wet because generations of practice has taught them to pay attention to the land. Fire consumes palmettos, oaks, and wiregrass. But only on the top. Beneath the black biochar, the plants survive. Waiting for the greens to return is brief. This is Florida. […]

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In This Together

We have been together for a long time. Humans, plants, animals, earth, water and fire. Together we have witnessed the change of seasons and changes in the land. The gaze of terrestrial beings looks upward to see the unlimited. Those in flight look downward upon the planet’s rich tapestry.Who knows how long humans have looked up to the congregation of Swallow-tailed Kites on their way to the wetlands of the Pantanal and the Amazon?On Fisheating Creek in Florida, the kites gather bearing witness to the earth bound. Look up and be grateful.

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Pineywoods Tree Climber

In an ecosystem where persistence matters, climbing high to reach ones goal is necessary for survival.  In the pine flatwoods of Florida’s palmetto island country, an Everglades Rat Snake shows us persistence isn’t always enough.  Watch the stealth of this elegant hunter as it pursues it’s prey atop a towering Slash Pine snag.  You’ll want to see how this hunt ends.  Enjoy the ups and downs of life in the pineywoods.

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Colors of the Florida Scrub

Into Nature Films creates a feast of colors to celebrate Earth Day with ‘Colors of the Florida Scrub’.  On Earth Day, we are humbled by the beauty all around us. We are grateful for our those who introduced us to the colorful wonders of nature at an early age. Filmmaker Jennifer Brown organized colors into sequences: Fiery red, lemon yellow, soothing green, pretty pink then the iridescent blues of the Florida Scrub-Jay. She decorates her visual confection with joy and the hues of tender oak-leaf shoots and vibrant blueberries. Two sequences featuring white-black-gray-brown colors (sand, char, whip-poor-will, acorn, scrub lizard, […]

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Tiny Grizzled Predators

There is a universe of minuscule creatures hiding in plain sight. These juvenile Grizzled Praying Mantis are ambush predators out for their first hunt in a fire-maintained pineland. Ancient cultures believed mantises had supernatural powers leading souls of the dead to the underworld in Egypt. The mantis represents courage and fearlessness in an ancient Chinese dictionary. Southern African cultures entwined with nature revered the mantis as Hottentotsgot ‘God of the Khoi’. The Praying Mantis large eyes, flexible neck, upright posture, and hunting prowess inspire awe and respect from humans throughout time. Notice and delight in the little things all around […]

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Misty Morning

Into Nature’s recent walk in the early morning fog across the ancient sand dunes of central Florida inspired ‘Misty Morning: Hatpin Season’. The sandy world of the southern Lake Wales Ridge is filled with many tiny wonders. Find your wonderland. Nature’s beauty is closer than you may think. #WondersFromWonderland #FindYourWonderland Also available to watch here:https://vimeo.com/401696609

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Looking for Love When You are Endangered

This handsome two year old Florida Grasshopper Sparrow male sings his little heart out for a mate. Known as Orange-Yellow from his color bands, he did not find love right away.  Despite his persistent buzzing and endearing crown plume sticking up, he was solo for his second breeding season.  As one of the rarest birds in America, there are not many females around to hear his sweet, soft song. Out on the beautiful, well-burned Florida Dry Prairie of Avon Park Air Force Range, he did find somebody the next season. Together, they raised a family. The dedicated biologists from Archbold Biological […]

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Tiny Beauties in the Black

The lives of plants and animals throughout Florida are entwined with fire. After flames and smoke, Florida Dry Prairie plants return in full force out of the black ashes. First come the grasses. Shooting green lines at the sun. Grasshoppers return to feed on fresh grasses in the postburn garden. The grasshoppers disappear into the prairie by sight, not sound. Ash-colored in the ash. Bright green in the rejuvenated grass.  If you live in a fire prone place, you have to adapt to fire. Listen carefully and notice the tiny beauties in the black.  Filmed at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State […]

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The Caterpillar Who Eats Sticky Lollipops

On the sandy edges of a warm pond, those noticing little things find the glistening sundew. It’s rosettes open and waiting to seduce the passerby. The Pink Sundew has no life-giving chlorophyll. It is a carnivore waiting to suck the life out of the clueless. A carnivorous sundew plant can seduce with its glistening charms, but the Sundew Caterpillar will crawl all over the ostentatious killer. Then eat the sundew’s weapons for lunch. After gorging as it pleases, the caterpillar transforms into an elegant Plumed Moth. Soon the lovely moth finds love and the wheel of life continues. Watch on […]

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The Woodpecker Story: An Indigenous Parable

Before the Spanish named this land ‘la Florida’, there was a woodpecker that inspired the earliest people to tell stories and make art. Indigenous people were able to observe the natural world around them and find meaning in that world. Like people today, ancient people created stories.  The woodpecker story is a surviving parable from early people here in our piney peninsula. The moral of the woodpecker story is simple: Be careful with trust. Things may not be as you were told.

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Song of the South

The Bachman’s Sparrow call is a whistle…then a trill.  Sounds like: ‘Heeeaaar, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty’ and you can hear it in open pine forests and grasslands of the American Southeast.  Known as a ‘Pinewood Sparrow’, this elusive ground dweller also makes a home in the Florida Dry Prairie.  Like other prairie and pineywoods dwellers, this species relies on frequent fires to promote the open understory in which they thrive. As the pinewoods of the Southeast US were logged, the Bachman’s Sparrow song was being silenced. The sparrows were resilient and began making use of clear cuts and other open, grassy […]

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Another Florida Roadside Attraction

We drive past these curiosities each day in Florida.  Stunning displays of the natural world. Displayed for all to see. All too easily overlooked. To lovers of tidy lawns, Bidens alba is a weedy eyesore doing little for “curb appeal” in parts of Florida where real estate replaces a rambunctious native landscape. These white petaled nectar powerhouses live in the humblest of places: Along the road and other disturbed areas.  Patches of Bidens are rich in biodiversity, becoming a Serengeti of insects engaged in grazing and predator-prey drama on a minuscule scale. Archbold Biological Station documented 81 species of insects […]

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Archaic Canoe

People have been in Florida a long time.  Florida’s past is often obscured under modern development in our hyperconnected world. In prehistoric Florida, a canoe provided connectivity to people all across the peninsula. Villages with elaborate mound earthworks and middens were common near water throughout interior and coastal Florida. To connect populations and bring new technologies like pottery as well as trade items, foods, and cultural practices, canoes shuttled across the wetlands, lakes, and rivers to the extensive villages.  An exquisite 4000 year old canoe from the Archaic Period (7500-500 Before Common Era) was found resting along the Kissimmee River […]

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Florida Summer is Here

Your front row seat at the first concert of the summer… Southern Toads announce the arrival of summer wet season in Florida with their passionate chorus. When wet season arrives, the dry flatwoods and wetlands of Florida come alive. The songs of the night change with a bit of water. Florida paleoecologists found Southern Toad fossils alongside Mastodon bones at the Page-Ladson site in the Aucilla River. Though the Mastodons are long gone, these colorful toads continue this ancient seasonal spectacle connecting us to Florida’s rich natural history. These tiny survivors, who outlasted the Mastodons, remind us of the joy […]

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Butterfly Bath

While filming the endangered Florida Grasshopper Sparrow, Into Nature Films captured this beautiful moment with a rare butterfly… A Palmetto Skipper freshens up perched on a dwarf oak in a burned prairie at Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area.  During Florida’s dry season, droplets of dew are precious. You will notice the elegance of this exquisite butterfly as it prepares for another day in the Florida Dry Prairie. Visit the outdoors and look closely. The small things are easy to overlook. Pay attention in nature because it is everywhere and there is much to learn.

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Pineland: Randell Research Center

When Ponce de Leon sailed along the Florida coast with his Spanish ship in 1513 naming these lands La Florida, the peninsula had thousands of sophisticated people. The Ais, Jeaga, Apalachee, Mayaimi, Potano, Seminole, Tequesta, Timucua lived and ecologically engineered the Florida landscape with canals and earthworks and fire. One of those tribes was the Calusa, a politically complex chiefdom society that controlled all of south Florida.  Much of their culture and structures were obliterated by the Spanish entrada and the subsequent effects of Florida’s transformation.  There remains stunning relicts of these exquisite cultures who lived here for thousands of […]

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Under the Blood Moon

Last night, all the light from all the sunrises and sunsets were reflected upon the celestial mirror we know as the moon. Once the moon’s face is eclipsed by the earth’s shadow, a constellation of stars appears and lights up the Florida piney woods. Watch the elegant pirouette of the moon as it swings across the dark night. The encore at the end is heavenly.

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Illuminating the Florida Bonneted Bat

Under the stars is a constellation of nocturnal life. But we know so little about the ecology of the night. When the sun goes down, a night-shift of fascinating wildlife appears. One of the most interesting of these nocturnal animals is the Florida Bonneted Bat who lives its mysterious life in the dark ecological web of Florida’s forests. Since 1936, biologists have known of this large Florida bat, related to the more common Brazilian free-tailed bat.  The Florida Bonneted Bat has the smallest distribution of any bat in the New World. Their range is confined to south Florida, a landscape […]

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One Day in the Florida Scrub

Into Nature Films went into the seasonal wetlands and sugar sandhills of the Florida scrub to make something beautiful. Filmed during one day of exploration on November 23, 2018, ‘One Day in the Florida Scrub’ captures the Florida scrub from morning moonset to evening sunset at Archbold Biological Station in Venus, Florida. ‘How can you understand the planet without walking upon it, sampling its marvels one by one, and then floating high above it, to see it all in a single eye gulp.’ (Diane Ackerman, ‘A Natural History of the Senses’)

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Archaic Everglades

Since the beginning of the Everglades of Florida, there were people. For thousands of years, Archaic Period Floridians lived in the watery margins. These early Floridians used generations of knowledge to thrive. They shaped the landscape to their needs. Now, much of the Northern Everglades has been shaped to fit the desires of modern humans. Dr. William Locascio and his Florida Gulf Coast University archaeology field class along with Matthew Colvin (University of Georgia graduate student) are unearthing a 3700 year old story from a tree island in the Everglades near Lake Okeechobee. The tree island is long gone. A […]

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The Ghost Crab

Florida’s most beautiful beaches are undulating dunes of sugar sand on Perdido Key and Gulf Islands National Seashore. The dunes and coastal forest is home to the endangered Perdido Key Beach Mouse who burrows into the sand. Beachgoers are more likely to see a Ghost Crab than a nocturnal beach mouse. The white beaches on the Gulf of Mexico attracted development. The storm prone coastal ecosystem was fragmented by vacation homes. Rare species, like the adorable Perdido Key Beach Mouse, declined. Our new film in production tells the story of people coexisting and protecting the Perdido Key Beach Mouse with […]

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Fire Ant Flotilla

The Red Imported Fire Ant arrived from the South American Pantanal in the 1930s perfectly suited for life in Florida…whether you like them or not. Florida’s wet and dry seasons are dramatic. To live well in Florida, adaptations to drought, flood, and fire are required. For the millions of Red Imported Fire Ants seeking dry land on self-made life rafts now, rising waters are just another day in paradise. These floating clumps of fire ants form within just one and a half minutes of rain submerging the nest colony. Ants join together using jaws and sticky pads on their legs. […]

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Earth Day 2018

Nature is wonderful and complex with a voice all its own. Take a peek into the daily rhythm of the Florida Dry Prairie in central Florida. Watch sun rise through a saw palmetto. A slough mirror for the sky above. Thunderstorm clouds gather. Snowy orchids at dusk. Then, fireflies under the stars.

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Facing Fire in a Palmetto Patch

Using a remote camera placed strategically, Into Nature Films documents the power of fire in Florida Dry Prairie as part of an upcoming production. To know Florida ecosystems well, one must understand fire. Fire is essential to nature conservation stories in Florida. Fire is necessary. Fire is beautiful. Fire is beneficial. Palmetto will survive the fire by resprouting. We see this in our work filming fire in Florida. We have also learned…In an instant, fire becomes unforgiving. Flames consume everything in its’ path…including our remote GoPro camera deployed in a firebreak. Wind driven fire in a palmetto patch reaches temperatures that […]

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The Padgett Figurine

Florida has been home to people for thousands of years. How they lived on our landscape is part of an upcoming production from Into Nature Films. Our work took us to the University of Florida campus where the Florida Museum of Natural History preserves some of Florida’s rich heritage. We talked with one of Florida’s premiere experts on Florida’s ancient people, Dr. William Marquardt. This is when we learned of a fantastic figure carved so long ago of native pine called the Padgett Figurine. The figurine was found by Robert Padgett in a plowed field near Lake Okeechobee in 1929 […]

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The Shape of Fire

Fire burns into the forested wetlands of Big Cypress National Preserve. As dry season progresses, the swamp retreats into the cypress domes. Standing water is both a barrier to fire and a refuge for wildlife. Filmed in collaboration with Big Cypress National Preserve Fire & Aviation Management on 3.1.18. #BigCypressNationalPreserve#PrescribedFire #FloridaConservation

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Passing the Torch

After a lifetime of burning Florida’s heartland, Sam Van Hook passes the torch to his son, Zach Van Hook, along with Michael McLeod and Jason Pressley. Using skills passed through generations of Floridians, this fire is expertly conducted. Burned every two years, this ecologically diverse ranchland supports Florida Burrowing Owls and critically endangered Florida Grasshopper Sparrows.

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2017 in 43 Days

Humans mark their beginnings and endings on the calendar. Nature responds to the ebb and flow of fire and water. For this patch of wild Florida, a prescribed fire brings a new beginning for the dry prairie. It is how we respond to change that makes us thrive. May 2018 be full of good fire and green prairie.

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Maple Swamp Refuge

At Palmetto Island, home to Into Nature Films, there is a tiny Maple Swamp where animals come to forage. Florida’s long summer is fading slowly and wetlands shrinking into the sandy soils. Here in the Northern Everglades, water flows southward until dry season turns the maple leaves to parchment and only the deepest wetlands have water. Wildlife congregate in these disappearing water holes hunting for the last morsels of wet season. Wild Hogs are common in these ephemeral swamps. So as part of an upcoming film about the untold natural history of hogs, Into Nature Films set up a camera […]

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House Wren Announces Winter Coming Soon

Breaking the conventional wisdom that House Wrens are supposed to be ‘more secretive in winter’. Not this loud, little guy who recently arrived from up north. This young one raises a full throated song in the Pinewoods of Central Florida. Watch him scolding passerbyers on a fallen Pine Tree taken down by Hurricane Irma. Then, as if auditioning for adulthood, he delivers a sweet melody from a recently burned oak tree nearby. Too shy to perform in full view of predators. Concealed in the camouflage of pine and oak, but revealed by hearty sound. This helps to improve the blood […]

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Prairie Fire Ecology: 38 Days in 37 Seconds

The brilliant red-orange flames of a fire danced across the Florida Dry Prairie like a wild paintbrush. Watch nature’s artistry transform a burned prairie into a living landscape within just 38 days. Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park #PrescribedFire

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What’s for Breakfast?

Watch a pair of Great Crested Flycatchers deliver expertly hunted insects to their nestlings tucked inside a dead pine tree cavity. #TyrantFlycatchers #FloridaNaturePhotography

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Marsh Bunny

Islands capture our imagination. Surrounded by beautiful water and floating in warm weather, they attract humans. The Florida Keys are an example of this human desire for living in a warm and beautiful world with nature all around. For the specialized that adapt to the native ecology of a small space, rapid changes are threats to a limited world. ‘Islands are where species go to die’. David Quammen wrote. Perhaps meaning islands are where margins are slim and unforgiving. In the last 400 years, about half of all species extinctions were island species. Even to species known for their ability […]

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The Parliament Fire

Into Nature Films is working with Big Cypress National Preserve to bring you the compelling story of people, fire, and a precious ecosystem. The woods and prairies of Florida’s Big Cypress Swamp are burning. #ParliamentFire In patches large and small, fire visits the prairies and pinewoods often in this expansive national preserve in South Florida. This time of year is the annual dry season. Water levels in the swamp are low and areas of cypress are visited by fire. Though fire is less frequent in these moist cypress forests, the cypress tree is adapted to the occasional fire.  The plant communities of the Big […]

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Into Burned Palmettos

Birds take their turn under the burned canopy of palmetto. Towhees, Cardinals, Catbird, and a warbler. Then, a family of Bobwhite Quail. Burned patches attract these birds who fill the undergrowth with their curious nature.  

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Ignition Pattern

To maintain the rich diversity of this large fire-adapted protected area, Big Cypress National Preserve needs to burn thousands of acres each year. The most effective way to burn the pinelands and prairies is from a helicopter. Watch as Big Cypress Fire Management use their skills to create burn patterns that reduce intensity and provide escape routes for wildlife. Smoke appears like ghosts rising above the dormant cypress and green pines. Small circles of fire grow slowly and join with other fires to gently transform the land. These fires also help reduce the accumulation of flammable vegetation. Skillful burning from a helicopter […]

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Pileated Woodpecker + Dead Pine = Love

Do not get between a Pileated Woodpecker and its food living inside a dead tree. In this case, the food is a wood-boring beetle larvae. And the dead tree is a South Florida Slash Pine. Watch a master forager of dead trees at work. Fire resistant pine bark is no match for the powerful chisel and body of a determined male Pileated Woodpecker with flaming red crest. Snags are alive with animals big and small. Let dead trees (i.e., snags) be in the forest.

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