Our Parks, Chapter 3: Jiggs Landing

Herald pohotographer Paul Videla crafted the latest photo gallery in Our Parks series, featuring the renovated Jiggs Landing Preserve in East Manatee.

Bradenton Herald's Our Parks series will help capture an extremely important element of Manatee County's legacy, we believe. Let us know if you have a nature's gem you'd like to see us tackle next.

PAUL VIDELA/pvidela@bradenton.com A kayaker skirts the edge of the shoreline of Evers Reservoir at Jiggs Landing Preserve

Manatee's parks: new photo galleries

We launched "Our Parks" this week on Bradenton.com and in the Herald -- a nature lover's dream, we hope.

I asked Metro Editor Marc Masferrer for three words to help craft an intro. His choices: pastoral, rustic, wild.

That's the essence of our photojournalists' project at Bradenton.com/ourparks/:

Manatee County offers dozens of wildlife habitats, rustic parks and pastoral gems of nature. Here, Bradenton Herald’s photojournalists will take you on a virtual tour through these havens.

Our first entry: Grant Jefferies' spectacular 40+ images from Emerson Point Preserve, a 365-acre preserve at the tip of Snead Island in western Palmetto. Here is one of my favorites: An osprey is perched high atop a tree at Emerson Point Preserve.