Birding around Kenansville, Florida
Lake Kissimmee & Lake Jackson
page three of three

RIGHT: Pine Warbler in an oak tree near the shore of Lake Kissimmee.

BELOW: Anhinga drying its wings.

Moving on from Lake Kissimmee to visit Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area where the loud warning grunts of Alligators are heard all around from where the large reptiles are unnervingly well-hidden in the marshy landscape.

LEFT: Lake Jackson where Snail Kites are readily seen in large numbers.

BELOW LEFT & RIGHT: A surprise, if brief, sighting of a White-tailed Deer in the dark shadows of the woods alongside the road near Lake Jackson. Interestingly, the deer's attention is not on the photographer close at hand but on the pickup truck careening down the dirt road toward us causing the deer to bolt out of sight moments after the below right image was taken.

 
A Snail Kite, also known as the Everglades Kite, winging its way over the Lake. Note its prominent beak especially adapted for prying Apple Snails, the Kite's main source of food, out of their shells. This bird especially, given its specialized diet of Apple Snails, is suffering greatly as Florida gets drained and paved over.
A baby Alligator.
A walk through the woods finds thick stands of oak trees covered in Resurrection Ferns and Spanish Moss. Golden-silk Spiders, also known as Banana Spiders, construct large webs along and sometimes across the trail. Note the size difference between the male Golden-silk Spider, circled in red, and the enormous female.
A Black Racer trying not to be noticed hides in plain sight immobile in the debris littering the ground. Eventually realizing it was not going to stop getting its picture taken, the Racer turned and sped away revealing it to be almost three feet in length.
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