Morning at Corkscrew

When we left Marc and Eliana’s house on Friday night we decided we’d meet them at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary at 7am on Saturday morning. From our house it is about an hour and a half drive and from theirs, add at least another forty-five minutes.

We weren’t exactly bright eyed and bushy-tailed when we got there. It was early.

Chris and I arrived first and hit the boardwalk after I downed the majority of my coffee since disposable materials aren’t allowed on the boardwalk. He set out for the cypress dome and I wanted to see what I could come up with in the fog that had rolled in across the open prairie. I wasn’t too successful with the fog but I did get some shots that I enjoyed.

Marc and Eliana are birders, something which Chris and I aren’t very good at. Well, we aren’t good at the little birds like finches, warblers and the like. They are pretty good at noticing the calls and it helps that their iphone has a spiffy app for bird calls so they can double check to see what bird it is. I think we racked up a bit of knowledge that day!

We saw a minute amount of wildlife, mostly at the first half of the trail. Eliana and I spotted two Big Cypress fox squirrels in some cypress trees, chewing on the cypress balls. I haven’t seen very many of these squirrels—they’ve been replaced by the more common grey squirrel. They were fun to watch for awhile and I know Chris got a few good photos. As we were going up to tell Marc and Chris about the squirrels they told us about a very docile red shouldered hawk that was being kind enough to sit still for photos. We switched places and started taking photos of the hawk.

This is the area where the super ghost orchid is located. Since it is out of the blooming season we had a bit of a time trying to point out just where it was off in the distance.

I think this is where Marc was looking for the yellow crowned night heron. A volunteer had set up a scope at the pond to let visitors check out the birds. This time of year is peak birding season here in Florida, when all of the migratory birds head south to stay cozy for the winter.

Reflection in the duckweed…

Stay tuned for the rest of the trip….

Does anyone have any good podcast recommendations? I’m looking for some podcasts that are free but of a high caliber. It can be gardening, outdoors, crafts, photography, well, just about anything that you can tell that is of interest to me. Send it my way!