Audubon Corkscrew Swamp sanctuary

Sunday
It was going to be rather on the cool side today, so we thought it would be a good day to visit Corkscrew Swamp sanctuary, about 30 minutes east of Naples. The 2.25 mile boardwalk takes you through pine flat woods, wet prairie, around a marsh, and finally into the largest old growth Bald Cypress forest in North America. There was plenty to see, wonderful Florida flora, birds and even a couple of alligators. One of the birds we saw was the snowy egret, with its beautiful tail feathers shown in my central photo. These beautiful birds were almost wiped out in the United States by the end of the 19th century by the fashion craze for birds feathers used in millinery. The fashion craze, which began in the 1870s, became so widespread that by 1886 birds were being killed for the millinery trade at a rate of five million a year; many species faced extinction as a result. In Florida, plume birds were first driven away from the most populated areas in the northern part of the state, and forced to nest further south. Rookeries concentrated in and around the Everglades area, which had abundant food and seasonal dry periods, ideal for nesting birds. By the late 1880s, there were no longer any large numbers of plume birds within reach of Florida's most settled cities. Finally, two crusading Boston socialites, Harriet Hemenway and her cousin, Minna Hall, set off a revolt. Their boycott of the trade would eventually culminate in the formation of the National Audubon Society and passage of the Weeks-McLean Law, also known as the Migratory Bird Act, by Congress on March 4, 1913.
My top right picture is Pickerel weed, a common plant in these wetland areas. Underneath is a tree trunk engulfed by a strangling fig.