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!
