Kayaking among the mangroves

Monday
This morning we kayaked the Commodore Creek trail, on the edge of Tarpon Bay, and part of the "Ding" Darling wildlife Refuge. It's quite short - only 2.5 miles - but a wonderful way to be in the midst of nature, and see some of the bird life up quite close - though it's difficult to focus on the birds when the kayak keeps moving! Roger did his best to keep it as steady as possible! Unfortunately, while the first part of our trip was fairly quiet, the second part became more crowded as a number of other kayaks - including a guided group - caught up with us - we were taking our time, carefully looking out for bird life. Funnily enough, we didn't see as much on the second half, with people talking to each other, not particularly quietly, and then we heard one couple complaining they weren't seeing many birds! However, it was still an enjoyable trip, and as you can see from my blip, we did see several birds.
After lunch we went to the beach, where we initially thought we saw a dolphin relatively close to shore, but then we realized they were stingrays - and there were quite a lot of them, swimmming up and down in the shallow water - I decided to skip ocean swimming for the afternoon! As we were returning to the apartment complex over the wooden footbridge crossing the lagoon, we saw several manatees, including a mother with a calf - unfortunately they didn't come very close, whilst some of the others passed directly under the bridge. I did manage to get a few shots, but they're difficult to photograph, since they spend most of their time under water, only occasionally coming up for air!