Quiet Days in the Everglades

A couple of days have passed at Flamingo campground. I bemoan the lack of wireless and Internet access and go cycling some more, Ellen goes walking and birdwatching. There are also a few ranger talks and we see a manatee and crocodiles.

There is no Internet access here so it will probably be a couple of more days until the Speedy Journal is published. They have ATT wireless, but only 2G service. A moot point, since we have a Verizon data plan.  Often, ATT will support T-Mobile roaming, but not here. Even though my phone shows four bars of signal, I can't use it. Maybe an ATT prepaid SIM card might be handy to have for times like these.

Yesterday, we took it easy. We have, after all, gotten to the southern tip of our trip. Time to relax. After a late start, I took a bike ride and Ellen took a walk. Ellen had intended to walk the Coastal Prairie Trail, which parallels Florida Bay, but after starting down it for a ways, she realized that it was 12 miles round-trip, she'd broght no water and it was pretty warm. It was a shortened walk. Maybe we'll do it a little later as an early morning trek.

I'm trying to continue the practice of a good ride in the morning, something I should do at home, but haven't been good at. I chose West Lake as my destination, about eight miles from the campground. It turned out to be about 18 miles total, with a couple of detours. 

The first detour was the marina. As I was passing by, I noticed a pair of cat-ketch rigged open boats at the docks. I thought they might be sharpies and rode over to take a look. They were actually Outward Bound pulling boats. They ship them from Maine to Florida for the winter and have winter expeditions on Florida Bay. I talked with two young women who were the ship's staff. The trip they were leading was a three week sail around Florida Bay for credit. Where were these courses when we were students? They started at John Pennenkamp State Park on the Keys, worked their way to Key West, then sailed across the bay to Flamingo. Six more days and a couple of side courses like wilderness first responder and scuba certification and the next group will arrive.

After that stop, I headed up the road, seven more miles to West Lake. West Lake is the  put in for a seven mile canoe trail through several lakes and out to a backcountry campsite on the bay called Alligator Creek. It has a ramp and several docks, a covered shelter and toilets....and birds. The lake seems to be the winter home of a large flock of American Coots. There were a couple of other ducks, but hundreds of coots.

On the way back, I stopped at Mrazek Pond which had a really diverse collection of birds. There were more coots, but also green and blue teal, great blue herons, tri-color herons, snowy egrets. moorhens and anhinga. Not bad for a little pond. After that, it was back to the campsite for lunch and a shower.

In the afternoon, we rode our bikes to the visitor center and attended a short ranger talk on the exraordinary senses of some of the Everglades wildlife, after a short detour to the marina to check out the store...disappointing, lots of sugary drinks, snacks and beer, but no milk or bread. Given that the nearest markets are 50 miles away, you'd think they might have a few more basics. We also took a look in the canal at the 14 foot crocodile sunning itself on the opposite bank.

Dinner, the evening owl fly-by and a decent ranger program entitled "Why Bird?" finished off our day. Did I mention the weather was sunny and not too warm?

Today started similarly. Ellen left early for the daily ranger-led bird walk. I went for a repeat bicycle ride up to West Lake, stopping at Mrazek Pond on the way. In addition to yesterday's birds there were also a great white egret, cormorants, white ibis and a wood stork. There were some lesser scaup at West Lake to join the coots.  We had both dabblers and divers. And there was a little three foot american crocodile sunning itself on the boat ramp.

Even after stopping at the visitor center for some information on hikes and paddle trails, I got back to Speedy before Ellen. It was a long bird walk and she saw a good two pages of birds. It looks like she will go back for more tomorrow. A different ranger leads the walk each day, so it is unlikely to be a repeat.

After lunch, we rode back to the visitor center for more ranger talks. The first was on manatees, which was given by a young woman ranger. This is her first season as a ranger and she was a little nervous, but the presentation was pretty good.  As usual, man is the only real danger to manatees. Their numbers in Florida had dropped into the hundreds in the early 80's But the Save-The-Manatee campaign started then and has been pretty successful with the number now in Florida around 4,000, but boats hitting them and getting cut by props are still their biggest problem. 

We then went over to the marina lagoon to look for manatees. Three seem to make their home there. We weren't expecting much, perhaps a surfacing in the middle of the lagoon,  but one surfaced right next to the dock, cruised along the edge of it so everyone got a good look, lifted its head out of the water and went on its way.

The second talk was on pythons, Burmese Pythons, to be exact. They have become quite the rage lately. As with most animals in the Everglades, they don't really have an accurate estimate as to how many of these exotic invasive snakes exist in the wild. Could be 10,000, could be 200,000. In any case, they have made south Florida their home. Much to the detriment to some of the wildlife. Just what one needs in their backyard is a five to 17 foot snake (17.5 feet is the largest captured so far). 

In the national park there has been a significant drop-off in numbers of small mammals. In the Flamingo area, the racoons are nearly  gone and the rabbits have disappeared completely. Since the disappearance of these animals coincided with the last two bad hurricanes that hit this area, they can't be sure it is all to do with the snakes.

Three good things: They do a great job in the agricultral areas in keeping down the rats, nine out of ten snake versus alligator encounters end with the alligator winning, humans are too big to be prey. After the unrolling of the 12 foot snake skin (no live snakes in the program), we headed back to camp—along the same trail where the ranger last saw a three foot sement of snake (alligator probably won). 

We took a pre-sunset walk around the nearby Eco Pond, where there is lots of bird life in the mornings, but it was pretty quiet. There were Osprey, but there is a nest there, so that was expected. We did get a good view of two young chicks in the nest. Other than that there was a single tri-color heron, two catbirds and a red-sholdered hawk flew into a tree next to us on the way out. We also heard a barred owl in the distance. On the ouskirts of the campground was an American Kesrel on the top of a dead tree. Such a small hawk. A crow flew onto a branch near it and dwarfed it in size.

The Barn Owl made its sundown run  past out campsite during dinner. It was pretty windy, but we ate outside anyway, just to get a chance to see him hunting.

So much for our first two full days in the everglades. The weather is still great.