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The Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is a natural oasis in the Mojave Desert in southwestern Nevada. It's just a few miles east of its much more famous neighbor across the California border, Death Valley. Actually Ash Meadows is officially a detached unit of Death Valley National Park. The Refuge consists of 24,000 acres of protected land that is being restored after early pioneers settled around the natural springs and diverted the water. Crystal clear spring-fed pools with endemic and endangered pupfish and blue water reservoirs contrast with the surrounding desert terrain. It truly is an oasis close to the "driest place in North America".
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It was a quite relaxing day here at Flamingo in Everglades National Park. I enjoyed taking photos, and we did some reading beside Florida Bay.
The Flamingo area of Everglades National Park is for fishermen, birders, nature lovers, photographers, and those that just like being away from the hustle and bustle of "civilization". This was the first full day of our second visit to this special place.
After another beautiful sunrise, we spent all morning bird-watching and enjoying the company of like-minded people from all over.
Snake Bight Trail & Nature Walk Around the Flamingo Area - Everglades National Park - Florida3/4/2011
Today, after a beautiful sunrise, we did a couple of hikes near the Flamingo area of Everglades National Park. They weren't very exciting, but we were able to get some good wildlife photos on the trails and around the Flamingo complex. Our first American Crocodile was a memorable sight.
This was our first time staying at the Flamingo Campground in the remote Flamingo area of Everglades National Park. Today we did some brief exploring with our best sightings at Eco Pond near the campground.
The Anhinga Trail on the eastern side of Everglades National Park is a very popular, easily accessible walk. The wildlife is close and used to people. On this visit, there were Anhinga chicks in the nests.
Six days ago, we were riding our bikes on the 15-mile paved road around Shark Valley when we got rained out. Check out this blog post: Return to Shark Valley. We returned today to finish the ride for some exercise, and to see if there was anything new. Well, we did have new experiences and added some more great photos and videos to our Shark Valley collection.
The only way to properly explore the Ten Thousand Islands area of Everglades National Park is by boat. And we found this comprehensive one-day commercial tour that allowed us to get a great feel for the Ten Thousand Islands. It was a boat tour, kayak tour, bird-watching tour, dolphin-watching tour, historical tour, eco-tour, and sunset tour all rolled up into one seven-hour trip.
Bosque del Apache is one of the best National Wildlife Refuges in the country for birders. Today, we had the opportunity to check it out for the first time.
Today, on a day off from our volunteer job at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, we drove over to check out the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge and then took a dolphin watching tour from Port Isabel at the causeway leading to South Padre Island.
I had been to Everglades National Park as a kid, but this was the first time Linda & I visited together. After a brief stop at the Gulf Coast Visitor Center, we discovered Shark Valley, a section of the park we had never heard of. It's a great place to see Florida wildlife, especially birds and alligators, up close.
I'm not sure when we discovered bird banding at Ft. Morgan, Alabama, but once we did, Linda was hooked. The Hummer/Bird Study Group banded migrant birds each year in April and October for two weeks in each month.
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