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Everglades Wildlife

We did see a fair amount of wildlife in our relatively brief exploration of the Everglades.  Many of these will look familiar from my Big Cypress postings, but we did get to see one type of wildlife in more detail and closer up!

Wood Stork in Tree

In Big Cypress, I only was able to see a wood stork from afar, as he flew away from me.  At one of our stops in the Everglades, I was able to get a nice close up of a wood stork.  In this image, he’s sitting in a tree, and frankly, not all that happy I discovered his favorite pond.  I really wasn’t close to him (it only looks that way thru the magic of zoom lenses), but I have a feeling not all that many people stopped at this pond.  We were the only ones there, even tho it seemed to be a fairly busy day in terms of visitors to the ‘glades.

Wood Stork Taking Off

Ok, so he’s had enough of me, even from a bit further away and separated by water I wouldn’t even dream of wading into (alligators)!  In this image, he’s getting ready to take off, and is actually beginning to.  Now, you can see his telltale black wing tips that are just about fully hidden when he’s not in flight mode.

Awkward Flight

Here he is more in full flight mode, altho not high enough to actually look graceful.  With his long legs and wings, he sort of looks quite awkward as he takes off heading further into the trees.  It sort of made me feel like he really shouldn’t be able to fly and that he was defying gravity!  This pond seemed to be a favorite spot for wood storks, as across the pond (too far away to photograph), there were dozens of them nesting in the trees.  As an aside, during the shooting of all of these (above) images, I had some sort of huge insect bug thing attacking me (as well as Jeff).  I could feel them bouncing off my head and hear them bouncing off my camera. They were incredibly aggressive, and I was only glad that for whatever reason, they weren’t biting us! Hmmmm….perhaps that’s the reason no one else was at this pond!

Everglades Sea Turtle

At another stop, we walked along another boardwalk to check out some wildlife.  This was the only place where we saw a sea turtle.  He was quite a bit larger than the land turtles, and if you look closely at the image, you can sort of see his flippers (instead of feet to walk on land).

Anhinga in the Everglades

We also saw more anhinga’s in the Everglades.  I included this image because in this one, you can see the bright blue spot of color that encircles his eyes.  I don’t think any other image I have of this bird included that.  Isn’t it great how Mother Nature adds just that added touch to make him stand out even more?

Twin Turtles

Here are some land turtles that we saw along our boardwalk stroll.  They were both sunning themselves on somewhat of the marshy shore, before one of them slid into the water and cruised over for a bite of lunch (below)!

Lunch

Alligator Resting

And, yes, even more alligators!  One interesting note – the Everglades is (I believe) the only place where both alligators and crocodiles co-exist.  Unfortunately, we didn’t see any crocodiles on this day, but it’s kind of cool (in a creepy way) to know that there is an equal opportunity of being eaten by both here!  Just FYI – alligators like fresh water and crocodiles like salt water, and these marshy waters tend to have a mix of both (called brackish water).  I always thought brackish water was just sort of still, slimy water, but I guess not!

Stalking Egret

And, of course, there were egrets all over the place!  Here’s a nice shot of one as he was stalking his lunch of little bugs and fish. 

Enjoy!