Our third day was essentially to return to the Homestead entrance to the park and visit some of the trails we missed on Day 1.
Before we set off we did scout around the Flamingo area again in case there was anything new. And there was. This is an immature Black-crowned Night-Heron.
Snake Bight Trail
The trail is 2 miles from the road to the coast at Snake Bight. It is almost perfectly straight. It goes through a variety of terrains, despite being in Florida and therefore totally flat. There were plenty of birds, particularly woodpeckers and flocks of White Ibis, but they persistently sheltered behind twiggy branches, or deep shade or simply kept moving about so the photographs were very poor.
Flowers can't hide from the camera.
And this spider chose to remain in the centre of their web.
The end of the trail. There are birds out there. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of them. About half a mile away. We couldn't even identify them with binoculars. :-(
More coastal mud.
A spiky, cactusy plant waiting to impale any hiker who carelessly steps off the trail.
Other Places
We didn't make notes of where we saw these other than "in the Everglades National Park somewhere".
Fruiting Sabal Palms. The cabbage-like growing tip and abundant berries were an important food for native americans.
A small fish in a pool. Considering the numbers of herons and other fish-scoffing birds in the park sunbathing near the surface of clear water is a very high-risk choice for a fish.
Good-looking trees. There was an information board about these trees. But we didn't take a picture of the board so we can't share the information with you.
An attractive plant of unknown species.
We ended up at the Long Pine Key Campground, still in the Everglades National Park. When we checked in the ranger had already cashed up and shut down the till. “Never mind. You can pay me in the morning.” So we did.
This campground had hot solar showers. Aaaah.
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