I took a full day trip on Saturday to Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. I left the house a little before 4, drove 3 hours to get there and hiked just under 17 miles during the day. Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park is one of the wildest places left in Florida. It is the most likely place to see a panther (no luck for me yet). There are also bear, bobcat, lots of gators and snakes, and owls. I was able to capture my main goal which was Everglades Mink. They are normally very shy and are not well studied. There is a severe drought in the area they live which has brought them into more contact with people. I wasn’t the only one with the idea as I met 6 other photographers that I knew from online down there out of the maybe 25 total people I saw all day. PS Grandma you might want to stop before the end…snake warning.

Young Barred Owl sitting in a tree.

A gator hole, one of the very few areas of water left along this trail.

Young racoon eating fish out of the mud puddle.

Everglades Mink

Everglades Mink

Everglades Mink with fish.

Everglades Mink

Young Racoon in the tree.

Gator chomping a fish. This small lake/pond had about 50 gators in it because it was one of the few spots with water still.

Gator eating a fish

Juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk with Skink

Cowhorn Orchid-Fakahatchee is famous for it’s orchids and there is even a book written about it, The Orchid Thief.

Red-shouldered Hawk calling

Showing off his Cottonmouth.

This is a very young cottonmouth (water moccasin) as can be seen by the colors and the greenish tail tip. However this one already has some type of eye damage to this left eye, possibly a fungal disease.

Young Cottonmouth

Here you can see the greenish tail tip. I helped him off the road using a stick so he didn’t get run over. People claim these snakes are aggressive, but it didn’t even bite the stick pushing him out of the road.

An adult Cottonmouth crossing the trail.