Oh my, we had such a good visit to the Everglades. Our theme for this stay was birds. We stayed in the most southern campground called Flamingo four days. Most of the sites are dry camping, no hook-ups, but they do have 41 sites with electric. After three days our battery was very low so we moved to an electric site to charge it. We will be researching solar panels for these situations.
There were many osprey nests in the Flamingo area and great sightings of osprey with fish. We also sighted a nest where the baby was up and getting fed. See the slideshow for pictures. It was amazing to have regular experiences with hawks sitting in low branches with their catches eating.
This red shouldered hawk fed off the grass beside our camper everyday. Wow, we would sit in our chairs and the hawk would pop down just feet from us feeding on grubs or worms in the grass. An eco pond just outside the campground had a great gathering of birds early in the morning: snowy egrets; great egrets; green herons; little blue herons; wood storks; roseate spoonbill; and red shouldered hawk. All those in one area of the pond chatting away. It was so neat to experience.
For our last day we moved about 38 miles north in the park (Everglades is a very big park) to a second campground available, Long Pine Key. Here there is no hook-ups at all. What we really enjoyed about these campgrounds is the silence. How nice. Here at Long Pine you are in more pine forested area and found the biking very nice.
A short drive to a trail titled, Anhinga Trail, gave us LOTS of great bird viewing. Baby Anhinga, purple granule, common moore hen, grebe, green heron, great blue heron, cormorant, white egret to mention a few. This cormorant bit off more than he could chew! I’m going to try to get my new slideshow on today but I may have to wait a few days to do it?
We moved to Oscar Shearer State Park Feb 5th. We will be here two weeks. I will post on this park next week. On Feb. 19th we then move to Myakka River State Park.
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