If you come here for the alligators
You are certainly not going to be disappointed. The claim is that they are in every body of water in the Preserve. I certainly wouldn’t dispute that. We saw babies that still have their stripes to really big adults. One actually hissed at the car. I guess we disturbed his reverie as he snoozed in the sun.

There is a pretty fair showing of them as well. For months we have been scouring marshland areas around lake in search of the elusive green heron. They are everywhere here along with every other type heron in the book. We watched a swallow-tailed kite hunting. To us, it was the picture of grace and maneuverability. To his prey on the ground, I suspect it was terrifying. We have watched egrets and herons staking out territory in the quiet pools under cypress and listened to the sharp chirp of osprey as they find their mates and build their huge nests high above us. The endangered wood stork, sort of homely but an amazing flier can be found wading in pools and perching high in the trees.

“River of grass”, it is amazing. We have already managed to mess up the natural flow of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee and leave the whole area hopelessly, irreversibly dependent on humans to manage the flow with canals and locks and gate systems. I hope we manage to save it for generations to come.
We are in a quiet small campground. It has lightening bugs. I just realized that I haven’t seen those little critters for months. I never really noticed but I guess they don’t live out in the arid west. We have driven wildlife drives and walked every board walk we can; but, it is really difficult to get out into the heart of this place. The guided canoe trips were full, maybe next time. That would be a very different look at the place.

It is a 2 ½ mile boardwalk through Bald cypress swamps. It was pretty cool and we found a few more birds to add to our list: the barred owl and the painted bunting. Egrets, heron and anhinga plus a few gators and some snakes all seemed to really like the place. I want to see it again in wetter season.

Makeshift seating balanced atop a slapped together frame riding on huge lugged tires. They run on really rough trails climbing over rocks and slogging through mud. They were first built by/for hunters to get out into the back country. We didn’t try it but there was no shortage of concessionaires just waiting to take the city folks out. All I can say is “hang on”. It looks like a disaster waiting to happen.

I can’t believe it, there are very few mosquitoes.
No panther sightings yet.
We saw more manatees.
There was a tree frog in the breaker box in camp.

Lipizzaner stallions. Beautiful, high spirited, graceful animals. The Herrnann stables that raise, train and perform the US line of Austrian Lipizzaner stallions is located here near Tampa. They have open training sessions and we stopped in for a couple hours. We got to see a lot of the younger ones who are just getting used to spectators and still honing their step but still impressive. Now I need to find out how to see them in performance somewhere.

Scientists have tried lots of ways to place themselves among treetop habitats. Myakka River State Park has a canopy walkway that let us walk among the palm fronds and treetops. We checked out all the strange air ferns and orchids that thrive here in the damp, dewy south. Quite a different view. The wildlife was mostly in hiding especially when we crossed paths with a bus load of preteens. Wow, they sure can be giggly and noisy! It was still fun.

An alligator about 8 feet long emerged from a quiet slumber in the sun. He swam across the river floated to a stop just 10 or so feet off shore face to face with the fisherman. (I was a comfortable 100 feet or so away). They stared. The gator inched a little closer. They stared. The guy got a little antsy, got up off his cooler and started tossing big sticks at the gator. More staring. I would have been out of there but the guy got a big palm frond and returned to guard his bait and rod. More staring. The palm frond slapped the water and the gator disappeared into the river. He re-emerged just another few feet off shore but a truce seemed to he made. Everyone settled back in and the fishing resumed.

We spent a few hours on the fine white sands of Clearwater beach. It is easy to see why it is a beach destination. Off and on clouds and some distant sea fog kept the sunburn potential at bay. The local Pirate ship skirted the beach and pier looking for bounty.

Florida has some unique species that are so rare that we might not see them in the wild. We are going to keep looking for them in the glades and around but just in case we don’t see them in the wild we checked out the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park.
The Florida Panther, they are not black like I had somehow pictured.
The Florida black bear, they are black just like one would think.
4 venomous snakes. I prefer the caged ones anyway.
We saw a bunch of more common critters too: flamingos (lovely pink), spoonbills (part of the captive breeding program), manatees, woodstorks, cranes, eagles, many types of owls and Lu…a FL hippo? Well, not exactly native but some sort of honorary Floridian. It was all pretty well done.