February 6, 2004 - Gulf Islands National Seashore - 3

Flamingo, FL, cont.

We've rented a boat and are out poking around and planning on doing a little fishing too.

Decent shot of some mangrove roots, and how the tree grows.  We shared the canal with lots of other boats.  Some in rental canoes like this one, some in their own rubber raft, and lots of serious fishing boats.

Yeah, Bill and Carol were enjoying themselves.  This really is a great lifestyle, you know.  And as we entered Coot Bay from the canal, we could easily see how it got its name.  Kind of a shame to disturb so many birds, but when they're practically covering the entire surface of the water, it's hard not to.

Now we're in Tarpon Creek, and rumor has it that tarpons actually come through here on a regular basis.  And then into Whitewater Bay where I start to cast a variety of hardware trying to tempt a tarpon into showing itself.  And Bill and Carol are rigging him up to use some of the frozen shrimp he bought.  Not sure I ever paid him for my share of it, either, come to think of it.

About the time the tour boat came by, Bill had managed to catch something or other, and I'd worn myself out casting for tarpon, so I started to use shrimp as well, and looky there.  I actually caught a little nondescript brown fish of some kind.  Barb thought it worthy of a picture, considering the cost of the boat and all.

And before I could get it off the hook, it puffed all up like this.  What a kick!  When I put it back in the water it floated for a bit, and I was afraid it would die, but then the air went out of it and off it swam.  And that's not a zebra fish, it's a very small black drum.  When they're young, the strips are very pronounced and as they age, the stripes fade according to Capt. John.  This one went back to grow a bit.

Lots of epiphytes and bromeliads (air plants), depending on what kind of tree they grow on, in Florida besides just the Spanish moss. This one was blooming with one white "flower" and another red one.  And there we are all safe and sound, back at the pier.  No fish to clean, but some caught and a great time had by all.

Bill and Carol have left to go back up to the Pacific Northwest to take care of some medical stuff, and we're wandering around the Everglades visiting the different hammocks and taking some of the trails.  The Strangler Fig is an interesting creation.  The sign doesn't tell us how it got into the canopy in the first place, but some literature tells us that bird deposits are the seed source which sprout and send aerial roots to the ground.  Other than that seems to describe its lifecycle pretty well.

Once again, that impenetrable forest, jumble, tangle, or whatever of the mangroves.  And it covers over our head as well.

And one of the most special birds to us.  A roseate spoonbill. Well named, eh?  It's another "tactile feeder," and you can see the mud it's stirred up as it swings its head back and forth stirring up the bottom looking for critters to eat.  This shot was taken at a pond a short distance from Flamingo.

Since the heron and spoonbill have different diets, they often can be found feeding together, with the heron in the water that is still clear, so it can see its prey.  And that bucket in the tree?  From the Pacific Northwest, we call these "Peat Pots", because they're often filled with peat moss and used to grow stuff.  The bucket is made of a sort of paper mache kind of stuff.  Bill and Carol had spotted them and asked us about them, we'd asked some of the rangers, but no answers.  Finally we asked one of the naturalists, and learned they are trying to encourage bees to live in the park.  Gee, is this something that is going on all over south Florida?  We saw the bee hive boxes earlier in the Keys, and now these buckets.  Hummmmmm.

One of those Southern Whites up close, and then we're off on a bike ride alongside of the canal we'd gone fishing in, and then down alongside a canoe trail into Bear Lake.  And it would be cool to actually see another bear, but we'd rather do it when we're in the Jeep as opposed to the bikes.

Well, we made it the 3+ miles to the lake.  Was it worth it?  Well, yeah, insofar as setting a goal and attaining it is concerned.  But the lake itself didn't impress us much.  Of course, that's not it's job, is it.  Typical brackish brownish water with some foam on it.  Couple of fishermen had been there a while with no luck.

Some of the foam was stacked up on the shore, which we'd not seen before.  And there's the canoe trail alongside the trail we're riding on.

The bike trail is sure less cluttered than the canoe trail, from what we could see.  And this was our swan song for Flamingo, so to speak.  Next stop, Big Cypress National Preserve.  And as we were getting settled in the Monument Lake campground (dry camping), Barb got all excited about a "swamp walk" that was going to start in 1/2 an hour.  We hurried to get our hiking boots on, grab the camera, and off to the visitor center we scurried.  When the guide passed out walking sticks with cute little day-glow orange tops, I thought it a nice touch, but didn't give it much thought.  Then when he said we'd be getting wet over our knees, I figured that maybe the grass was wet from a recent rainstorm and Barb thought he was kidding.

Well, this was no joke.  Except on us!  We were going to spend 2 1/2 hours actually walking in the swamp, or as you can see, slogging through the muck.  The ranger/guide was good about pointing out some of the special things in the swamp, like this little snail that is all over the place.

The trail is narrower, occasionally only a little over the tops of our boots, and then another snail.  The apple snail.  There's a bird that exclusively eats these guys, but neither Barb or I can remember which bird it is.  Pretty important snail to keep an entire population of birds alive.

Ranger Rick explaining why we only sink so far into the muck.  South Florida is made up mostly of that stuff we saw in the old quarry.  Coral and limestone.  The swamp is usually pretty shallow, with exceptions of course, like lakes and ponds.  And of course, Barb found a pretty colorful flower amongst the rather drab green/gray swamp.

And a couple of blooming bromeliads (air plants) as well.  Bromeliads are part of the pineapple family.

Apple snail eggs.  Or at least the empty shells of their eggs.  And we've transitioned from the prairie into the cypress trees.  These are bald cypress as opposed to the black cypress.  The bald cypress sheds its leaves in the winter, and the black cypress doesn't.

Our hopes of finding an alligator in this little pond were dashed, but there was still a bright spot spotted by Barb of course.  Actually, there may well have been a 'gator in that little pond before we got there, but with the noise we made getting there, it would have been long gone.  No snakes, either, and I was really hoping to see some.

OK, now we're getting serious about this swamp walking.  The tricky part of it is to keep from tripping on some log or vine below the surface that catches your foot.  The guide almost went down once, and the other woman on the tour lost her balance a half dozen times.  Barb and I stumbled but stayed dry.  At least from mid-thigh up.  Well, mid-thigh on me anyway.  And then something pretty special.  An orchid.  And in bloom, yet!  According to Ranger Rick anyway.

It's called a cigar orchid.  Gee, I wonder why.  Try as I might, I had trouble taking a shot of it that would make it beautiful.  Frankly, I don't think it is.  But it's unusual, and I'll confess I'd never seen one before.  It's an bromeliad too, and gets its nourishment from the air.

Heading back to the visitor center, we were no longer following in each others footprints.  There are two schools of thought about walking in the swamp.  One says that by following each other, less of the swamp is impacted by our action.  The other side of the coin is that by spreading out, we don't make channels for water to flow, and thus have a smaller impact on the swamp.  Since both are valid arguments, we followed each other going out, and scattered going back.  Three different very distinct areas in our 2 1/2 hour slog.  We're back in the prairie here, and the muck is often only at boot-top level.  And after "washing" ourselves off in a ditch at the edge of the highway, here we are all nice and clean.  Yeah, right.

Our washing off the crud didn't disturb the local population at all.  They just kept acting like alligators.