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.All Trips / Florida / North America / Southeastern USA
A visit to the Everglade National Park: Shark Valley’s “River of Grass”
This is the last in a three part series highlighting a visit to Florida’s unique Everglades. The first part discussed the Cypress forests of the Everglades and the second part highlighted the coastal mangrove forests near Everglades City. Today I’d like to share with you a great example of the major component of the Everglades, the “River of Grass” — tens of thousands of acres of partially submerged sawgrass. Within this flat landscape are some small islands on which grow cypress, palm and gumbo-limbo trees.
The Everglades is characterized by a broad shallow river flowing from Lake Okeechobee into Florida Bay. This river averages 40-50 miles (75 km) in width, 6 in (15 cm) in depth and flows very slowly, …
.All Trips / Florida / North America / Southeastern USA
Everglades City, Florida: Mangroves, Manatee, and the Sea.
This is the second in a three part series on Florida’s unique Everglades ecosystem. The first part focused on the Cypress forests of the Everglades, which you read about here. This post deals with a visit to the coastal Everglades.
Everglades City is a small town (population 400) in southwestern Florida abutting the ocean to the south and Everglades National Park to the east. The town is situated towards the southern end of the Everglades. In this region, the “River of Grass” has transitioned to a coastal mangrove forest. Mangroves thrive where the water is brackish and saw-grass can’t survive, and mangroves are ecologically important because they helps anchor the land and keep it from eroding during …
Tagged airboat, birds, Everglades, Everglades City, manatee, mangrove, wildlife
.All Trips / Florida / North America / Southeastern USA
Florida’s Everglades: Big Cypress Bend boardwalk at Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park
The Everglades is a fascinating and unique place — a broad shallow river slowly moving to the sea and covering a large portion of southwestern Florida in a thin layer of water. Mostly the Everglades is characterized by its “River of Grass”, endless acres of saw-grass (run your finger along it’s edge and you’ll see how it got its name). I’ll be writing about my visit to Shark Valley in Everglades National Park soon, Shark Valley being representative of this “River of Grass” ecosystem. The mangroves are another face of the Everglades found along the coast, where fresh and salt water mingle, and we’ll also be discussing Everglades City which is in this region in a future post.
Today …
“Pic of the Week”. January 31, 2013. Whooper and Trumpeter Swans
I had a great travel year in 2013, one of the highlights being the large numbers of swans I saw throughout the year. Never before had I seen so many of them!
While in Iceland we encountered many whooper swans. They were everywhere — from city ponds, to fields, to streams and rivers. And they were beautiful to watch! Whooper swans have a range that covers much or Europe and Asia.
On lovely Vancouver Island and even in my home province of Alberta, I saw thousands of trumpeter swans. The two photos to the right (below) were taken in the Courtney River Estuary on Vancouver Island, near Comox, where hundreds of them were resting on their migration, enjoying …
Jan 30, 2014
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“Pic of the Week”, January 3, 2014. The Echidnas of Southern Australia
Today’s highlighted photo features a baby short-beaked echidna known as a “Puggle”. It likely is the rarest photo of an animal I’ve ever taken in the wild (note: this is not a zoo photo). Puggles are carried in their mother’s pouches and it’s rare to know the mother is with child unless you’ve closely followed her (in this case by a group of field biologists on Kangaroo Island, using radiotelemetry).
Echidnas, also known as spiny anteaters, are egg-laying mammals (monotremes) found only in Australia and New Guinea. The female lays a small soft-shelled leathery egg which is deposited into her belly pouch. The young echidna hatches in about 10 days, the youngster sucking on milk from one of two milk patches (monotremes …
Jan 2, 2014
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“Pic of the Week”, December 6, 2013. African Wild Dogs, Chobe National Park, Botswana
One of the rarest animals I’ve ever encountered in nature is the African Wild Dog. While on safari in Chobe National Park our guide took us to a pack of them living near the park boundary and we spent a half hour quietly studying them. They reminded me of their namesake, domesticated dogs — sleeping in the warm afternoon, pups tugging at each other and the parents not wanting to be bothered by them. The normality of the scene belied how uncommon seeing these dogs is. No one knows exactly how many of them survive, but by some estimates there are less than 5000 wild dogs left in Africa (about the same number as black rhinos).
Also known as the Cape …
Dec 5, 2013
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“Pic of the Week”, Oct. 25, 2013. Ostriches, Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania
Ostriches are odd creatures. They are the tallest birds in the world — about the height of a man (2 m) — have larger eyes than any other land animal, and proportionately an itsy bitsy brain. They are flightless but are exceptionally good runners, known to have burst speeds up to 70 km/h and sustained running speeds of 50 km/h. While they look awkward and vulnerable, their powerful legs legs make good weapons easily capable of killing a man or gutting a lion.
Ostriches are mostly found on the African Savannah and live in small herds of less than a dozen birds, like you see in this photo. Males have the dark plumage and females are a drab gray-brown color. It’s said …
.All Trips / Africa / Botswana
Chobe National Park: “In Chobe We Trust”
Having completed five great days on safari in the Okavango Delta, we caught a tiny bush plane (Safari Air) on an almost non-existent sand strip and spent two hours flying to Kasane, a small town in northern Botswana near the entrance to Chobe National Park. The flight took us over the myriad of small pools and channels in the Delta, the Kalahari desert and finally towards the forested northern part of the country where we could, in the distance, see the Chobe River. We were greeted at the airport by our guide, Disho, from ‘And Beyond‘, our safari company. Our gear was sequestered into …
Tagged Botswana, Chobe National Park, Chobe River, Safari, wildlife
