Florida, Day 8

 Friday, February 11

We had a big adventure today. We drove down the Tamiami Trail to the edge of the Everglades. Probably a lot of us don’t pause to think about where the name “Everglades” came from. It’s just a name. It wouldn’t surprise me if many people don’t even know what a glade is, other than air freshener. A glade is an open space among trees. Everglade is a big open space, now often taken to also mean swampy. Here is a picture of the Everglades.

Glade, forever

The first thing I learned on our trip is that there are two kinds of vultures. I only knew about turkey vultures. There are also black vultures. Turkey vultures have pink skin on their naked heads; black vultures’ heads are black. The lack of feathers is an adaptation to their habit of eating carrion. Feathers would harbor organisms of decomposition from the food. (Why did the vulture get kicked off his flight? He wanted to board with more than one carrion. Ha ha.)

Black vulture

We left the Tamiami Trail to drive a loop to the north through abandoned drainage ditches. I’m sure draining the Everglades seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out to be disastrous. It has not been easy to reverse the damage. In any case, some of the ditches remain, and birds and alligators hunt fish there.

We saw juvenile ibis, a black-crowned night-heron, a kingfisher, many, many egrets, anhinga, tricolored herons,  little blue herons, and wood storks.

Juvenile white ibis

Black-crowned night-heron

Kingfisher

Great Egret

Anhinga

Tricolored heron

Little blue heron

Woodstorks

We saw an alligator on the opposite side of the canal. That seemed like a good place for it.

Alligator on the opposite shore

We also saw a brown and white bird that Jan thought was a limpkin. When I looked closely at the picture, though, it was obvious that the bill was too short and thick. Because it was yellow (visible in the flight picture), I’m calling it a juvenile black-crowned night-heron. Its wings had a pretty pattern when it flew.

Juvenile black-crowned night-heron

Juvenile black-crowned night-heron in flight

We drove down to Everglades City for lunch at the Camellia Street Grill. We sat outside by the water. Jane and Jan had fish. I had a pulled pork sandwich. The food was good, but pricy.

Waiting for lunch

After lunch, we drove the 24-mile loop through Big Cypress Swamp. It seemed odd to see a red-bellied woodpecker on a palm tree. Quite a different setting from the bird feeder at home.

Red-bellied woodpecker

Big Cypress, like most cypress swamps, had trees emerging from water. The best places to see anything were the breaks in the trees where the road crossed culverts.

Big Cypress waterway

We saw an anhinga in a tree.

Webbed feet just don't look right in a tree

A great blue heron among the cypress trees,

Great blue heron among the cypress

A great blue heron that did not have any fear of alligators. This alligator was right at the side of the road. We did not get out of the car.

You would not think this was a safe place for a heron to hang out

The trees were adorned with bromeliads.

Bromeliads in the trees

We saw another alleged limpkin that probably was a juvenile yellow-crowned night-heron, based  on its short, thick, black bill.

Possible juvenile yellow-crowned night-heron

This is an adult black-crowned night-heron.

Another black-crowned night-heron

We saw a red-bellied slider,

Red-bellied slider

A green heron,

Green heron

Another great blue heron,

Another great blue heron. Hard not to take the picture when they pose so nicely.

And an alligator that was taking up so much of the road that it was hard not to run over its tail. It was enormous.

An alligator that did not seem to care much about the fate of its tail

It was getting to be time for sunset. We wanted to go to Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge to see flocks of water birds come in to roost. Jan and Jane had been there last year and seen hundreds of birds.

We did not have the same luck this time. We went to a two-level tower that was mobbed with birdwatchers. It was a lovely night, very calm. I got a nice picture of a great egret and a coot (or possibly a gallinule) with reflections on the water.

Great egret in the sunset

We did see flocks of ibis come in, wave after wave. Since I hadn’t seen the spectacle last year, I was impressed. It was a nice way to end the day.

Ibis coming in to roost