FLORIDA WINTER

 

Six-Mile Cypress Slough Preserve, Fort Myers

 

It was a beautiful day for walking Friday at Six-Mile Cypress Preserve.      Birds were a little scarce, but I had fun chasing woodpeckers around their trees (with my camera, from a good distance).  I saw red-bellies (the one above)  and downies.   Also lots of warblers flitting about including a very nice sighting of a black-and-white (but no pictures), and a hawk or two.  

So, yes, Friday was a good walking day — but it was cold (for Florida) earlier last week.  How cold was it, you ask?  It was so cold ….  

 

Obviously not my picture.  I (virtually) clipped it from a website

 

…. that the Iguanas fell out of the trees.    Iguanas become cold-stunned when the temperature drops into near-freezing.  Their breathing slows and they enter a state of torpor which causes them to lose muscle control.  They live in trees and when that happens to them, they fall.    People are reminded not to pick them up or move them  — they are not dead and when it warms up, they'll be off and running — well, moving anyway.)

 

This is an original — from my Florida archives –an  Agama lizard, not an Iguana

But it wasn't really quite that cold here — we live in NW Florida  and although we woke up to temperatures in the low 40s on a couple of days, it never actually got down to freezing here on the Canal.    Still a little chilly in the mornings, but the sun warms things up during the day.  I don't think our lizards had much to complain about.  Neither did we.

 

Wood Duck Pond, Six-Mile

 

Like all reptiles, alligators don't generate their own heat.  When it gets below 70 (F)  they've already slowed down and stopped feeding.  In really cold weather, they will burrow into a den in the bank and go  dormant until it warms up.  They can even live under ice while in a dormant state (according to Google — I've never seen an alligator where there was ice.  And don't want to.)

 

 

Wood Duck Pond

 

The Alligator on Wood Duck Pond was sharing the same log with other critters — quite a group of turtles and an Anahinga drying its wings at the other end.  (It was just a little above 70 degrees — all critters were safe!)

 

 

Brown Anole at Six-Mile

 

It's rather reptile-heavy around the blog today, isn't it?  Apologies to those who think they're a little creepy.  Personally  I find them  fascinating in all their prehistoric glory.  But I wouldn't get real close to the larger ones.     This brown anole is definitely not one of the large variety.

Through the magic of a zoom lens, it's possible to get better pictures — but it can also distort  our perception of size.  This guy is very tiny — about the size of my little finger.    That Alligator above was around eight feet long.       The Agama Lizard in my archival shot was probably around a foot.

 

Cypress Knees in the Slough

 

There was a lot of water in the slough — and that's a good thing.   The Cypress Knee families were happy.  (They look to me like hobbit people.)

 

 

Six-Mile is one of my favorite places.   It's part of the reason we have been happy to come back for all these years — the natural beauty of this State (so green) is not what people who have never been here usually think of when they think of Florida.    We certainly learned quickly that the Pacific Northwest doesn't have an exclusive corner on emerald green nature.  

 

The same patch of sky — looking down and looking up.

 

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