Today was the final day of our vacation before we fly back to Maine tomorrow, and we spent a good part of it at the Shark Valley section of Everglades National Park. The canal along the seven-mile walkway there teems with birds, alligators and other reptiles, and butterflies--it's hard to decide when and where to turn around, because there's that constant anticipation of what you might see or hear next. One of my favorite birds seen here is the strikingly colored purple gallinule, but other highlights of today included a nest of fuzzy baby anhingas, young green herons walking on lily pads, another swarm of migrating tree swallows, huge kettles of vultures, singing white-eyed vireos, bobbing prairie and palm warblers, a foraging limpkin, a young wood stork rooting around in the weeds, and some cool butterflies: zebra, white peacock, and Palmida swallowtail. Knowing it was our last Florida outing, I just wanted to go on and on... But, as I was told as a child by an elderly woman I was staying with in Scotland, "All things come to an end, and the black pudding comes to two."

Always another
egret, spoonbill, gallinule
around the corner.