For a change of pace, Tony and I hiked in Grassy Waters on Saturday. The Owahee Trail follows the head waters of the everglades and the source of fresh waters for palm beach county. While we have never seen the quantity of bird life at Grassy Waters that we do at Wakodahatchee and Green Cay, we usually see a variety of both animals and birds.
As we started our hike, we ran into a lady with a dog (which is a no no) and two small children making lots of noise. She mentioned how she was disappointed because she hadn't seen anything, I was hoping that it was because all the wildlife was scared from all their commotion!
The 8 mile hike did not disappoint. We did not see a lot of birds, but it's the quality, not the quantity that was important. Grassy Waters also borders Mt. Trashmore and the most prevalent birds there are the Black and Turkey Vultures, floating high on the thermals over the trash piles. You always want the wind to be blowing in the opposite direction of your hike and cooler days are a must!
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| Pileated Woodpecker |
Starting our hike seeing normal birds for the area, a couple Red Shouldered Hawks, a couple woodpeckers, a graceful Wood Stork flying overhead, two Red Bellied Woodpeckers and a Pileated Woodpecker flew in from the swamp too- you know, the woody woodpecker kind. I never even knew what it was until I came home and looked at my pictures!
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| Belted Kingfisher |
A couple of Belted Kingfishers were teasing me, a skittish, elusive bird that is very hard to get a good picture of because they are always flying off in the opposite direction! Of course we saw the usual wading birds, a couple of Great White Egrets, a couple Tricolor Herons, a Little Blue Heron, both a white juvenile and an adult blue one and a Limpkin. We also saw some waterfowl, Coots, Morehens, and Ducks.
Towards the end of the hike we saw about 100 Ibis starting to roost for the evening, filling the trees along the canal.
However, our hike held several surprises for us. We took a half a mile detour down a boardwalk and in the distance near the marshes, we saw a Bald Eagle! We watched him for 15 minutes or so before he flew off. It was actually the 2nd one I had seen this week!
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| Bald Eagle |
We also saw a mysterious raptor near the M canal which I am still trying to identify, it was almost the size of an eagle and soared right over our heads!
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| Mysterious Raptor |
The great thing about Grassy Waters are the other animals that you can see. Besides turtles and alligators
that line the canals, we saw 3 separate sightings of raccoons.We noticed a mother and her 2 babies walking down the path right towards us immediately after we had seen the mysterious raptor.
Because we were stationary, she didn't really know we were there, so I had ample opportunity to click away. They were so cute!
We also spotted a large river otter. While we couldn't watch him play in the canal, we did get a close encounter with him before he disappeared in the brush and the water.
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| River Otter |
And of course, what is any hike in Florida if you don't see a snake! Very happy when they aren't poisonous and I see them before they see me! A large 5 black snake greeted us near the end of the hike.
As we drove out the parking lot, we saw the most beautiful bird in Florida, a Rosette Spoonbill, sitting on a pipe at the entrance to the dump, guess he was trying to spruce up the entrance!
Florida has so many parks and preserves, Tony and I have fun checking them all out to see what treasures they will reveal.
