Our February trip to the Everglades started with a bit of a disappointment; there were few birds on the Anhinga Trail. In past years when we visited there were thousands of birds. What happened? We were told by a park ranger that the water levels were unusually high for this time of year due to above average rainfall a couple months earlier.
Normally as the levels go down, water recedes into a few deep pools. It is thus that fish are concentrated into those pools. The concentration of fish then attracts birds and alligators. The Anhinga Trail is located on one of these deep pools. This year, the waters did not recede into the pools and was evenly dispersed so there was no concentration of fish, and thus no concentration of birds.
The result was we spent less time in this part of the Everglades and more time elsewhere. Like the water, we dispersed ourselves. We took the time to drive slowly to Flamingo, at the end of the Ingraham Highway on the Gulf Coast, stopping frequently along the way. In Flamingo we signed up for a talk on the Manatee which are indigenous to the area.
Our journey took us west along “Alligator Alley” eventually to Naples, with a stop in Big Cypress National Preserve, and south through Biscayne National Park to Key Largo.
There is a lot to see in the Everglades, even without the birds. The many stops along the highway offer a deeper insight into this environment and its nuances. Big Cypress Park was enjoyable as well, and while it lacks the scale of larger Cypress Forests such as Congaree or Louisiana, it provided compelling glimpses of the forests that once dominated the south east. Biscayne National Park is oriented to the sea, not the land. To fully experience this park a boat is required. Unfortunately no boats were available (regardless of what was said on the web site) and this limited our experience here.
So bird pictures will have to wait another year, but in the absence of one option, others emerged.
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