day 3

click 'day 3' above to see all the pix!
Spent the day at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples which is run by Audubon. From their web site: "A 2.25 mile raised boardwalk takes visitors through 4 distinct environments: a pine upland, a wet prairie, a cypress forest, and a marsh."
It is a wonderful place to spend a day - to see plants and wildlife and to take photos. Blair taught me how to use more of the settings on my camera to adapt to the conditions and adjust the shots. I took almost 200 pictures - most of them are in my latest picasa album, my favorites are on my fb page. One of the great things was how helpful other visitors were - when someone saw something they would take the time to point it out to others who were passing by on the boardwalk. When Blair's lens cap and lens cap rolled off the boardwalk a visitor happily climbed over the side to retrieve it! Luckily we were in a dryer section of the sanctuary at the time. We talked to him several more times as we walked the loop - he used to work for National Audubon in Ohio. Almost all the visitors had cameras - some were making the walk with big cameras with even bigger lens on tripods. For wildlife we were lucky enough to see painted buntings, oven birds, red bellied woodpeckers (who do not have red bellies), red shouldered hawks, egrets, a snake, racoons, a turtle. There were lots of bromeliads, resurrection ferns that had been brown earlier this week and after yesterday's rain were open and green. When something interesting is spotted an employee comes and velcros a sign to the railing so you can try to see it - that's how we knew about the poisonous saddleback caterpillars that were camouflaged on some leaves! In one place there was a spotting scope for visitors to use to see a heron that was perched on a branch over the cypress swamp - guess they don't move much during the day. There were volunteers strolling on the boardwalk too - they were happy to stop and chat and answer questions. Found out from one of the volunteers that the wood storks that used to nest there might not be back this year because the fish that they eat are in short supply. It was too cold for us to see alligators today - they were all staying out of sight. Blair said it was more crowded than usual at Corkscrew - didn't seem too bad to me.