The two of us made a three-day, two-night excursion across the Everglades beginning last Thursday.  We awoke early and shivered in the 50 degree weather to get started in the darkness.  It took us twelve hours to cross the peninsula and turn south to Homestead where we had motel reservations.  Most of our stops were in the Big Cypress Swamp and Shark River Slough areas where we spotted the usual wading birds and studied the tropical trees.  We made our last stop at the Chekika entrance to Everglades National Park, but a volunteer was closing the gate as we arrived.  We chatted with her a few minutes and then cruised slowly back to the highway spotting birds in the fading light. 

On Friday we drove the length of the main park road to Flamingo.  We enjoyed the usual fine sights including great alligators and one huge crocodile.  We also poked about hammocks observing the tropical vegetation.  The park is recovering nicely from the hurricanes of the past decade.

On Saturday we again awoke early and drove into Miami and onto Key Biscayne.  This charming isle south of Miami Beach is perhaps the most golden part of the Gold Coast.  The north third of the island is a county park and the south third is a state park.  The middle is private and there are certainly no low-income housing units there.  I dare say there aren’t many middle class folk who own property there either.  If there are any they could sell their holdings and become rich.

A small bird of the species La Sagra’s Flycatcher has elected to winter in the coastal scrub in the state park.  Most of its kind live in the Bahamas and the Caribbean islands.  For whatever reason this bird appeared on Key Biscayne last fall and spent the winter there.  This December it returned.

We arrived at the park at 7:50 a.m. and waited for the gate to open at 8:00.  We watched the flag rise and the gate open, paid our eight dollars, and drove into the first parking lot.  Then we began a stroll along the “nature trail” looking for a referenced white gate.  We walked over a spoils mound and through a small coastal hammock of stopper, fig, and gumbo limbo.  Then we passed through scrub vegetation of buttonwood and stopper stopping for a flock of gnatcatchers and warblers.  I soon spotted a small crested flycatcher that gave a thin wheek call.  In a few moments both of us were catching glimpses of the bird that was moving around inside the canopy of a small tree.  We enjoyed documenting all its “field marks,” large head, slender pointed bill, white flanks, and rufous wing and tail marks as well as its distinctive call.  Then it flew off, but a few minutes later we came upon it this time sitting nicely on a wire.  There it stayed for a minute or two before returning to the bushes.  We shared a life bird kiss and moved on.

We continued our walk to the scenic Cape Florida lighthouse before turning around. Returning up the trail encountered Robin Diaz who as a local volunteer was listing birds in the park.  We enjoyed picking her brain about the park and its wildlife.

We left Key Biscayne as hoards of Miamians were arriving to enjoy the beauty of the island on a splendid winter morning.  We stopped in the City one more time to explore little Simpson Park.  This is is a five acre remnant of the tropical upland forest (ten feet above sea level) that once spread around the mouth of the Miami River.  Most of that forest is gone, the land now urban; but within the walls that surround this tiny park one walks through a dark forest that was once the coastal paradise of the Tequesta (not Mayaimi)Indians that inhabited this area at the time of first European contact.  There we saw one of the last wild Gulf Licaria trees in the United States. 

From there our trip back to Fort Myers was uneventful except for a long drive across the City of Miami.  We arrived home in time for dinner, leftovers and relaxed celebrating a successful tour of the Everglades and Key Biscayne.

This should be a quiet week around the condo.