Everglades National Park - Flamingo

After our day on the water at Biscayne Bay, we returned to Everglades National Park for two days, exploring the eastern portion of the park.

Right away in the morning we saw this grackle sitting on the car with the sun emphasizing his iridescent colors.

We started by heading towards the Nike missile site. Just east of the Boy Scout camp on the road are two ponds. Today has a threat of thunderstorms and the winds will be gusting to 30 mph. The thunderstorms ended up staying east of the park, dumping 4.5 inches of rain on Miami.

We found a number of birds at the two ponds, including the Wood Stork.

We then continued south to Flamingo, stopping at many of the ponds, which were mostly empty. There was an osprey nest near the tent camping area. The turkey vultures would swoop down at the nest and the ospreys would scream at them.

The town of Flamingo was named for the bird. However, they were hunted to extinction here, so you rarely see them here. We did see a manatee in the marina.

We stopped and hiked the Snake Bight trail in the afternoon. There was one puddle near the beginning, but it was dry the rest of the way. No mosquitos either.

We were really surprised to see cacti growing along the trail. Here’s a couple of them. But it seems that a slightly raised elevation of even a few inches can create a much drier environment here in the everglades.

We stopped at the ponds east of the Boy Scout camp which were almost empty in the afternoon and then walked the Anhinga Trail on the way out of the park.

There were three Anhinga chicks mobbing a parent that had come to feed them.

The second day we got really lucky with the weather. The thunderstorms and rain were east of the park, and it was nice and sunny in the park. We started again at the ponds east of the Boy Scout camp. We found a pair of Roseate Spoonbills.

We then headed south to Flamingo to see if we could get on the Ranger led kayak tour. You need to sign up the morning of the tour between 8:30 and 10:30am for the 1:30 pm tour. We got there and were able to sign up.

We hiked around Echo Pond and the Guy Bradley trail and then ate lunch while waiting for our kayak tour to start.

Right before the kayak tour we saw this crocodile and manatee hanging out together in the water.

The kayak tour lasted about 90 minutes, but didn’t go far, a couple hundred yards outside the marina. We had very smooth seas and saw many osprey. Our ranger guide hadn’t seen this many on the kayak tour before.

As we ended the kayak tour and went back to the marina, we saw a snake swimming out to the islands, about 50 yards off-shore. The ranger didn’t know much about snakes and I didn’t have my good camera to get a nice picture, but I did have my underwater camera with poor zoom and took some photos. The experts on iNaturalist were able to identify it as an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake.

We stopped at the Pineland Trail, the Pahayokee Overlook, Mahogany Hammock Trail and the Anhinga trail on the way out from Flamingo.