The weather was a little cool for another trip to the beach, so instead we went for a walk in this gorgeous preserve.

The entire walk through the slough is on a boardwalk, since the cypress preserve is flooded most of the year.   

 Last year we saw lots of alligators and a family of otters playing right in front of us.  No such luck this year, but we saw lots of birds (yay!), including green herons (below), white ibis, palm warblers, Carolina wrens, anhingas, great blue herons, great egrets.  Oh, yeah, and some non-avian wildlife - lizards, various turtles, butterflies, beetles.  My mom is a Master Gardener and she’s a plant buff the way I’m a bird brain, so she was able to teach us a lot about the bromeliads, ferns, cypress, and other plants in the slough, too.

The Preserve has added a new nature center since last year, and I will write a bit about that tomrorow.