Everglades - Our only subtropical wilderness

"There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them...." - Marjory Stoneham Douglas

Aaaahh the Everglades..and one big post. Back in January, Ron and I found out that we would no longer have weekends off together. Since we'd been hoping to get to Miami and other parts of South Florida, we decided to book a trip! We did South Beach the first day, and the Everglades and Keys the second.

The everglades is something I've always wanted to see. It was designated a National Park in 1947 due in no small part to reaction from Marjory Stoneham Douglas's book River of Grass. It was the first park to be created because of its biological rather than geological significance.

The park comprises 1.5 million acres or 2120 square miles. That's just under 20% of its original size. It's not a swamp. It's a 40 to 60 mile wide, shallow and slow moving river that serves as a haven for countless numbers of endangered animals and plants and serves as a natural filter for biological pollutants. For those reasons, I had been intrigued by the idea of visiting the park. And finally, I was going to get to see it!

We decided to enter the park at the Ernest F. Coe visitor center, south of the Shark Valley entrance. We'll visit that in another trip.

After miles of farmland, we finally came upon the beautiful visitor center. I could have just spent hours there!

The park beat the visitor's center hands down though. About 30 seconds after we entered the gates, I saw a flash of movement next to the car. A red-tailed hawk had landed directly beside the car to catch a smaller bird, and then flew off to our left. It was amazing! I wanted to get a photo, but it happened so fast that all I have is a small brown blip in the far left corner of the photo.

We went on to enjoy the wide stretching vistas and multiple views of wading birds, osprey and hawks until we reached Anhinga Trail. Anhinga Trail is one of the most popular walking trails in the park. Because of this, the animals tend to go about their daily routine as if humans were not there. Here we saw many many double crested cormorants along with anhingas, herons and egrets. The cormorants were so accustomed to people, I was able to get close enough to get a shot of their emerald green eyes. Aren't they gorgeous?

The alligators also had no fear of people, as you can see by how close Ron got to take this photo. Did you know that the southern tip of Florida is the only place where you will find alligators and crocodiles living together? We didn't see any crocs, much to my dismay. The areas where they are usually spotted were inaccessible to us due to hurricane Wilma. But I was happy to see our friends, the toothy 'gators. I had never seen large ones that close before.

Before we left anhinga trail, we got to see the orange barked gumbo limbo tree. Its smooth, coppery bark is really beautiful. We also had a little bit of humor when we observed a crow begging for food from some woman near her van. I had run to the restroom, and when I came out, Ron was urgently motioning toward the van. There a crow stood, on the pavement, making a strange, "aglurk glurk" noise. It was definitely not a sound in a crow's normal repertoire. Our only guess was that it was one of the sounds he had learned to mimic from somewhere, and that he was using it to gain attention and thus... food. He obviously had been rewarded for it in the past. Crows are part of the corvid family and can mimic sounds much the way parrots can. It was pretty darn funny, and the first time I was able to see it in action.

We were both pretty excited about Anhinga Trail, but two of the birds that I had really hoped to see were the roseate spoonbill and the purple gallinule. The roseate spoonbill is a beautiful blush pink with a long flattened, spoonlike bill, and the gallinule is a gorgeous deep purple. I just couldn't imagine seeing birds of those colors in the wild. So we trudged on, stopping at various amazing pull off points on the way until we made it to the tip of the Everglades...Flamingo. We were very excited about visiting that section because flamingo, being the point where fresh water meets salt, has an amazing array of animal life, and an unrestricted view out into the ocean on all sides. It's the tip of the continental United States. It was here that I had hoped to see the two birds I sought. However, as I mentioned before, hurricane Wilma damaged that end of the Everglades so badly that it wasn't safe for us to proceed past the parking lot. The lodge and marina there had been utterly destroyed. All the vegetation was wiped out and replaced with foul smelling mud and debris. And the gnats were so thick it was hard to breathe. We could only see a glittering tease of the ocean just beyond the horizon. We hope to go there again once nature has had time to recover so that we can see even more of that awesome place.

I couldn't possibly have mentioned this whole day in detail, so for those of you wondering what animals we saw, here is a list. And keep in mind, that most of these we saw very up close and personal. :) I think if we went again, we would see more, since our animal watching skills have improved.

boat tailed grackles
common grackles
cattle egrets
cardinals
red-tailed hawk (adult and juvenile)
snail kite
ospreys (nest building, fishing etc)
red shouldered hawks
kingfishers
American alligators
white ibises
great egrets
snowy egrets
little blue herons
green herons
great blue herons
wood storks
coots
double crested cormorants
American crow
anhingas
green anoles
Cuban anoles (invasive species - Haf, these are the ones mostly missing their tails at the Grandparents' house ;-) )

Our last shot... and the closest we got to seeing a real Florida panther. ;-)