OK, I confess—despite living in Florida for almost 20 years, I never visited the Everglades. So now that I am in Miami, I had to fix that.

The Everglades is in effect three separate parks, each with its own entrance and primary areas. The most popular by far is the Royal Palm area, near Homestead FL.

The Everglades is in effect three separate parks, each with its own entrance and primary areas. The most popular by far is the Royal Palm area, near Homestead FL. Most of the species here will already be familiar from other areas of Florida. But the Everglades itself is a unique system—there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. As southern Florida’s heavy rainfall builds up, it flows through the southern tip of the state to the Gulf Of Mexico, forming what is in effect a very wide, very shallow and very slow-moving river.

So here are some photos from a day along the Anhinga Trail.

The Coe Visitors Center

A fishie keeps an eye on me

An Anhinga shows how they got the name “snake bird”

Spatterdock, the Florida equivalent of the Water Lily

A lovely old Banyan Tree

Pickerelweed

Softshell Turtle

Black-Crowned Night Heron

American Alligator

Black Vulture preening

Double-Crested Cormorant scratching an itch

Another Cormorant strikes a regal pose for me

Redbelly Turtle

Epiphytes

Purple Gallinule racing across the Spatterdock pads

A very large and very colorful wasp