It's flat. That's it's thing. You drive 50 miles or something and your elevation changes about three feet. To someone whose grown up surrounded by something called "topography" that's pretty unremarkable. Still, despite its definite lack of splendor, it still manages to be interesting. And, it's like nothing we'd ever seen before.
The Everglades are a place everyone hears about, but I don't think the area is somewhere everyone really knows about. It turns out that the everglades are an enormous river system. Before Florida was developed, wetlands flowed from the southern end of Lake Okeechobee south to the Bay of Florida on the southwestern corner of the peninsula. That's about a hundred miles. Because this part of Florida is mostly a flat limestone sheet, the water flowed in a single sheet miles wide and inches deep at a very slow rate; it only descended an inch or two per mile.
Because the southern edge of Lake Okeechobee has been developed, Everglades National Park and adjacent reserves protect the remnants of this unique water system. The park service pumps water into the wetlands to augment the lack of lake water. Don't get me wrong, though. The remnants are extensive, and preserve pretty capably the aquatic system's character.
So the experience of the Everglades, at least from the Homestead entrance, is of primarily a few different ecosystems defined by very small elevation changes. There are extensive tropical pinewood hammocks near the northern edge on limestone shelves above the level of the water. Then there is wet sawgrass prairie in the water itself stretching way off into the horizon. Dotted here and there in the prairie are patches of tropical hardwood forest growing in accumulated debris and some dwarf Pond Cypress forest in solution holes. Finally, near the ocean you start running into extensive mangrove forest.
All of these were something we've never seen before, and we found exploring them to be the primary interest of the park. It's not naturally awe inspiring or spectacular like our western National Parks, but with some time and patience it yields the inherent interest it holds.
Our first goal for the morning was to look for Chuck-Will's-Widows in the pine hammocks area at the entrance. We got there half an hour before sunrise and got out of the car to catch the tail end of their nocturnal performance.
Our next goal for the morning was to find some Cape Sable Seaside Sparrows. These secretive birds live in the wet sawgrass of the Snake River Slough. They're accessible from the road near a place called Mahogany Hammock. We arrived in time to watch the sun rise. While it rose, Eastern Meadowlarks and Red-winged Blackbirds were singing in the rushes and sawgrass. No sparrows, though. In fact, we never heard them sing, but we did end up seeing a couple of them. A few birds perched up high enough in the rushes that we were able to get distant but identifiable scope views of this distinctive subspecies of Seaside Sparrow.
As a sad footnote, it's worth mentioning Florida once hosted two distinctive subspecies of Seaside Sparrows (distinctive enough to be sometimes considered full species). The Dusky Seaside Sparrow lived in the area of Cape Canaveral and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, but went extinct due largely to salt marsh mosquito abatement efforts. The last known individual of this unique taxon died in captivity at Disney World in 1987.
Next we headed to Mahogany Hammock for a morning walk. This was the first large tropical hardwood hammock we'd visited in Florida. In the Everglades and Keys, the vast majority of the flora is of tropical origin - something like 80% of the plants are from areas south of the USA. Curiously, most of the fauna is temperate and comes from the rest of North America. It was interesting to walk around in these jungle like environments. Trees with exotic names like Poisonwood, Gumbo Limbo, Strangler Fig, and West Indian Mahogany were festooned with bromeliads, orchids and epiphytic ferns. Bird-wise, the place was less than hopping, though. We did get our life look at a roosting flock of White-crowned Pigeons, but mostly the place was full of Catbirds and I seem to remember a White-eyed Vireo and Black-and-White Warbler.
So, after this little exploratory stop, we backtracked north to the Anhinga Trail. The Anhinga Trail is closest to my vague impressions of what the Everglades would be. Visitors can walk along a boardwalk and view wading birds at close range. That was pretty cool. There were also alligators aplenty and turtles and fish. The marsh there hosts an interesting fresh water swamp tree called Pond Apples that reminded me of a fresh water version of a mangrove.
We were searching the area for a reported Smooth-billed Ani. It was seen before and after our visit, but we weren't able to find it while we were there. From the same parking lot we took a hike through the Gumbo Limbo Trail, which explores a hardwood hammock that's still recovering from Hurricane Andrew. We ate lunch here before fleeing an enormous school field trip.
Our escape route was south again, into the park, stopping at various overlooks and trails. There aren't a lot of bathrooms in the park, so we had to stop at West Lake and explore their mangrove trail. We learned about how mangrove forest diversity is tiered on distance from the water. And that there are multiple species of mangroves - like Black Mangroves (which we saw in Texas), Red Mangroves with long stilt-like roots, White Mangroves and Buttonwood. It was very educational.
Before leaving the parking lot we really smeared on some mosquito repellent. We rolled down our sleeves and buttoned up all of our buttons. Our next stop? The Snake Bight Trail - infamous as the worst spot for mosquitoes in the continental United States, but also famous as a pretty awesome birding location.
I really wanted to see what the fuss was all about, and Libby was willing, though not thrilled, to follow me. So we went! And there was not one single mosquito there! Instead, there were dozens of migratory songbirds. We saw Painted Buntings, singing Prairie Warblers, Northern Waterthrushes, Northern Parulas, Black-and-White Warblers, Black-throated Blue Warblers, American Redstarts, White-eyed Vireos, Blue-headed Vireos, and lots of beautiful butterflies called Zebra Longwings.
The butterflies were a lot easier to take pictures of than the birds were.This was the only place in the park where we encountered songbird flocks that weren't almost all Gray Catbirds (though there were Gray Catbirds there, too). We also had more White-crowned Pigeons. Unfortunately, the cost of all these birds was stifling heat. There was no air movement in the gap of trees, and we were sweating hard. So, after an hour or so, we turned around and headed back.
As another little tangent - I had a close-up encounter with an Alligator here. After we realized there weren't any mosquitoes, we decided to keep walking further on the trail than we'd originally planned. So, I ran back to the car to get some fluids. When I got there, I opened up the passenger door to get our field guide from the car's passenger door pocket. As it swung out, something moved in the adjacent tall grass and I thought, "Hmm, bird." So I started scrutinizing the base of the log laying there for a waterthrush or something. Then it registered that the trunk was a leg. And that it was the hind leg of a large alligator. And that the front leg and adjacent large teeth were much closer. So I hopped back in panic. Which left the front door open. So I had to close it. Which meant going back.
Anyway, our next stop was Flamingo. That's an interesting little place at the southern tip of the park where you camp. They have a visitor's center, which was somewhat interesting. We had some ice cream and looked around for American Crocodiles. We saw one's tail sticking out of the mangroves (they are a different color than the more common alligators), but none were out in the open. There were lots of Osprey, a couple of Bald Eagles, lots of Brown Pelicans and wading birds, etc. We surveyed a flock of Willets on the limestone shelf that substitutes for a beach down there for a vagrant Bar-tailed Godwit that had been reported, but we didn't find it. We also missed Shiny Cowbirds that are sometimes reported from the visitor's center lawns there. We did find a few Brown-headed Cowbirds, but they're somewhat less exciting. The Indigo Buntings in the trees were cool, though.
Then we drove out. We stopped again at the Anhinga Trail to look for the Ani without success, but got to hear a pair of hooting Barred Owls in the late afternoon in the area of the Gumbo Limbo Trail. We tried to hunt them down, but weren't able to see them before they stopped calling. We did find a Brown Thrasher and a Swainson's Thrush, though. I believe the Swainson's Thrush was a previously reported wintering bird. That's incredibly rare, as Swainson's Thrushes migrate to South America every year.
And then we drove back to Miami for the night. Next day? The Florida Keys!
Pictures on Flickr.
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