Birds and birders converge on Everglades

An Anhinga poses for a photographer
on the Anhinga Trail © George Leposky

 Birds and birders alike are now flocking to Everglades National Park.

 At any time of year the park ranks among North America’s premier birding locations, but activity peaks in late fall and winter when migrants from the north swell the avian population.

At any time of year the park ranks among North America’s premier birding locations, but activity peaks in late fall and winter when migrants from the north swell the avian population.

A great blue heron.  © George Lepos

 Also in these months, people find visiting the park mostappealing due to moderate temperatures, lower humidity, and fewer mosquitos.

Everglades National Park encompasses 2,358 square miles, an area into which all of Delaware and most of Rhode Island would fit. If your time to explore this vast wilderness is limited and you’re looking primarily for birds, go to Royal Palm Hammock, four miles from the main visitor center near Homestead, which is 30 miles south of Miami.

At Royal Palm Hammock, the half-mile-long Anhinga Trail follows a boardwalk circling through a sawgrass marsh to a pond-apple slough. Along this trail, you’ll find a profusion of birds. Herons and egrets, storks, anhingas, cormorants, gallinules, hawks, and vultures all cavort in full view. 

Also present will be a huge flock of birders equipped with high-powered binoculars, tripod-mounted telescopes, and cameras bearing massive telephoto lenses through which to “capture” their avian prey. Other photographers specialize in photographing the bird photographers. Observing this three-ring circus is a great way to spend a bright, breezy winter morning.

Most visitors to Royal Palm Hammock walk the Anhinga Trail and ignore the adjoining entrance to the Gumbo-Limbo Trail, a separate half-mile circle. That’s a pity, because the Gumbo-Limbo Trail traverses a

totally different ecosystem – a dense subtropical forest. It’s South Florida’s version of a jungle, with a few northern plant species mixed in.  Here the appeal for birders is an assortment of warblers and other songbirds flitting through the shrubbery.

A purple gallinule.  © George Leposky

If you have an entire day to spend in the Everglades, take the 38-mile main road from the visitor center to its end at Flamingo. You can drive it in an hour – or spend all day appreciating its many revelations.  The road passes through a cross-section of the park’s ecosystems, with turnouts where you can stop to explore pineland, freshwater sawgrass prairie, a hardwood hammock (tree island), cypress, mangrove, coastal prairie, and the margin of Florida Bay’s marine/estuarine habitat.    

For birders, several ponds in the mangroves near Flamingo offer opportunities for exceptional sightings. When you reach Flamingo, go to the visit center’s second-floor overlook for a sweeping view across Florida Bay.

If your timing is right, you may see a flock of white pelicans that migrate across from the western U.S. to winter in the Flamingo area. Also present at Flamingo are brown pelicans, seagulls, terns, black skimmers, and other water birds; wading birds such as herons, egrets, and roseate spoonbills; and raptors – bald eagles, several kinds of hawks, and black and turkey vultures.

While you’re in front of the Flamingo visitor center, look up at its radio antenna, into which a huge bundle of branches and twigs has been stuffed in a seemingly haphazard fashion.  This is an osprey’s nest.  The rangers will tell you that wildlife protection trumps radio reception, so the nest stays.

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