Gators Galore

The winter is flying by! Normally, winter in the Everglades is the dry season -- meaning little to no rain and mild temperatures. This winter however, has been exceptionally wet. January 2016 had the most rainfall since record-keeping began in 1932. As a result, the Everglades is still much wetter than normal for this time of year. Because of the high water levels, fish are more spread out than normal, and their predators are too. 

According to my coworkers who've worked here for many years, the visible wildlife is a fraction of normal. Luckily for me, I have no basis of comparison, and continue to be amazed by the wildlife. Alligators especially, so I thought it was time to share some more photos. 

This guy seemed to be napping and basking in the sun right on the trail. He laid there for hours. The fourth grade students I had on my field trip that day went home with a great story to tell!

I saw these two basking on the grass right near the parking lot at Shark Valley, in the northern part of the national park. They couldn't be bothered by the hundreds of visitors walking past.

I'm learning that it's not too difficult to convince northerners to visit South Florida in the winter :)  I was fortunate to have my best friends from Dartmouth visit a couple weekends ago. We had a great time exploring the Everglades, and relaxing on the beach in Key Largo.

We also took a glass-bottom boat tour in John Pennekamp state park. Looking down on the brilliantly-colored fish and coral was amazing. I look forward to going out there again with a snorkel!

"There are no other Everglades in the world"

Happy new year! I jumped into 2016 with a new job with the National Park Service, working as a seasonal education ranger at Everglades National Park. I've been here for nearly a month now, and thought I'd post some photos and reflections.

The list of differences between this park and Yellowstone is long, but one of the most profound is the surrounding population. Everglades National Park sits in Miami-Dade county, where there are roughly 350,000 students in public schools K-12. This a huge opportunity for Everglades, and the Environmental Education office is growing in attempts to reach as many students as possible. 

I'm working with a new field trip program that works with 80 to 100 fourth grade students each day, Monday through Thursday, each week. There have certainly been some challenges with this new program, but I'm learning a lot and the program is getting better each day. Last week, a group of students on one of my field trips got to see an Anhinga spear a fish, fight with it for several minutes, and eventually swallow it whole. Moments like that make my job very rewarding :)

Great white egret. One of many types of wading birds seen in the sawgrass prairies and freshwater sloughs.

American Alligator. The Everglades is the only place in the world where alligators, who live in freshwater, and crocodiles, who live in brackish water, coexist.

This is the amphitheater at the Flamingo campground, looking out on Florida Bay. 

On my drive home one day during my first week, I had to wait for this guy to cross the road.

Yesterday, I went canoeing in Florida Bay and saw many types of birds. This bald eagle seemed like he was posing for me. I also saw a roseate spoonbill, more brown pelicans than I could count, ibises, great blue herons, little blue herons, green herons, and of course lots of gulls.

Here's Betsy Baja in front of the Everglades National Park sign on a big brown rock, which people lovingly refer to as the potato.

"There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them; their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of the their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of the light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass."

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, The Everglades: River of Grass, 1947