Open wide!

Sunday
Everglades Day 1
After breakfast, we drove to the nearest entrance to the Everglades, at the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Centre, just about 20 minutes southwest of Homestead. We stopped to look around the Visitor Centre and picked up a map, then set off along the road, heading southwest toward the coast at Flamingo. There are various places where you can stop and take a trail, which we did. Unfortunately, after a bright start, much of the day was pretty overcast, though still pleasantly warm. My main blip of the Osprey nest was taken at the Flamingo Marina, a fairly busy area, but the Osprey didn’t seem at all perturbed by the people going back and forth below. I was thrilled, and surprised, to see they had young - I was thinking that would be more late March/April time. As you can see in one of the shots, there were three chicks in the nest, and the mother was busy feeding them, though from what we could see, there was one chick that seemed quite dominant. We treated ourselves to an ice cream from the shop, and ate it by the marina, watching the birds and the boats, before heading back to Homestead. I have added an extra, showing other scenes from the day, including an alligator and a crocodile, also seen at Flamingo. You can see the crocodiles snout is longer and slimmer than the alligator.