When I think of the Everglades National Park’s Royal Palm Visitor Center I immediately see two visions in my mind: a parking lot full of vultures and Anhingas. The first vision includes a non-identified carcass suspended from a lamp pole which supposedly kept the Black Vultures from eating the rubber off of your car’s windshield wipers. The second one looks like this:
I snapped this photo on our previous visit to the ‘Glades in 2010, printed it out when we got home, and admired it for some years after. It represents what I like about southern Florida in general and the Royal Palm Visitor Center in particular: a person can get very close to many remarkable birds, reptiles, and amphibians. Here are some from our recent trip, which like the first one, didn’t disappoint…
We had barely arrived to the center when we watched a female Anhinga stab a fish. She then spent five minutes or more attempting to figure out how to get it off of her beak without losing the fish altogether. She did eventually succeed. The photo looks strangely colored because I heavily tweaked the contrast parameters to bring out the fish.
Sadly, the photo above shows a gorgeous male Peters’s Rock Agama. Sad because it’s an invasive species from Africa that’s out-competing local lizards. Yes, there are two S’s because it’s named after a biologist named Peters. He’s perched atop a rock wall bordering the walking area outside the center itself. In other words, it only took a bit of telephoto and my being ready to snap the shot when he stopped for a second. They’re skittish.
In the center of the walk visitors can access several viewpoints around a large, lily pad-choked pond. Surveying the pond, one can pick out alligators here and there…
Sharper eyes spot turtles…
And running across the lily pads are the most striking little birds! Behold, the Purple Gallinule:
When birds abound I tend to ignore the rest of my photographic subjects. I apologize to myself, and I promise to make something of a few of those photos which haven’t made the cut this time. To carry on, though: I had a good time “stalking” this Green Heron in an attempt to get a shot where it held still.
One benefits in several ways when a visit to the Everglades occurs in the so-called winter months. It’s usually warm enough for shirt sleeves; mosquitoes have disappeared; manatees congregate in the warmer waters near the shore where people can see them (sorry, no good photos of those, I’m afraid); and in late February and March young fledglings have been born. This striking set of shots caught me by surprise. I’ve never seen a family of Anhingas before. Frustratingly, they were located across the pond and partially hidden in the branches of the trees. I don’t usually publish out-of-focus photos but this old man couldn’t get the shot at that zoom level with no tripod/monopod or grip.
As we left the pond and headed back to the parking lot, I looked for the little gator we’d seen on our way out. Only three to four feet long, it had found refuge in a shallow bit of water no large alligator would deign to look at. It had disappeared, found its way elsewhere just as we planned to do. Will I visit again? Unsure. There are so many places to go in the world. It had been 16 years since our previous visit; 16 more years and I’ll be looking at my 88th birthday (Lord willing). Tough to say.
all the voices in my head 