Leapin' Lizards and Feathered Friends

This is a Cuban Brown Anole or curly tailed lizard! Supposedly he and his friends came over from Cuba during one of the fierce hurricanes. These were all over the patio of the restaurant in Chokoloskee Florida. This was where we stopped for lunch on our visit to the SW portion of the Everglades.

This is the above anole showing his "dew lap" trying to assert his maleness!! Someone had to tell me what was happening here -- this is a small lizard and I hadn't ever seen this behavior before!





The first stop in our tour was the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. Even though we were only an hour south of Ft. Myers, I really felt like I was in the tropics today! This was one of many spiderwebs crusted with dew we saw in the early morning.




Later in the day, we visited Big Cypress National Preserve and saw this very successful cormorant with their catch!

Another stop in Chololoskee was this old general store (Smallwood) and post office looking very much like it did 70 years ago. I very much enjoyed looking at the Seminole embroidery. displayed there!

I do love bougainvillea and there was a lot of it I spotted today in all different colors. This was a pink/orange variety.

This was an amazing set of alligators we almost ran into at Fakahatchee. We saw what we thought were palm fronds laying across our side of the road. Upon closer inspection, it was a 8 foot alligator who was wondering across the street with his smaller friend.
Up front and personal with the above alligator -- not too close though!!

Another little green heron we ran into along the way.

This one is hard to see but it is the first time I have seen an owl in the wild -- it is a Barred Owl and I even spotted it first!

This is another of my favorite birds -- the Wood Stork. We saw several of these today doing all sorts of things including one who was trying to eat a wriggling yellow snake. This fellow was just sitting in a tree -- I hadn't seen one in a tree before. Blends in with his background pretty effectively I think.


This is a strangler fig. It grows around another tree and they are really interesting looking!

This is a Tri-Colored Heron. It looks a lot like the larger Great Blue Heron.

This was a particularly handsome Anhinga. These look a bit like their cousins the cormorants. Generally (but certainly not always) you see the Anhingas where there is fresh water and cormorants near the salt water. We saw them freely intermingling today. The Anhinga is also called the "piano key bird" because of their striking wing patterns.

It was a very full day and we saw many more birds but my pictures were not the best!! If you look at my sister's blog, I am sure you will see her perspective on the day!

This was one of many Red Shouldered Hawks we saw today. They are very common here and of course we see them at home.