Animals of the Everglades

Although we are presenting under two separate pages the plants and animals of the Everglades, in reality they form an integrated community. In the Everglades you will find different communities, each with its particular --and many times exclusive-- species of animals and plants in an integrated ecosystem, depending one from each other for survival. "In this subtropical garden of plant-and-animal communities, every breeze-touched glade, every cluster of trees is a separate world in which are tucked yet smaller worlds of such complexity that even ecologists have not learned all their intricate relationships." (Cited from the Everglades Wildguide handbook indicated below as further reading).

Aside from the insects that abound in the Everglades, the list of animals found within the park or in any of its immediate areas include more than 40 mammals, 350 birds, 50 species of reptiles, and 18 amphibians. This list include some rare and endangered species such as the Florida Panther, the West Indian Manatee, the American Crocodile, and the Snail Kite.

We start our selection of photographs taken in the Everglades with the Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), because it is considered the symbol of the park and the Everglades' most famous citizen that is looked for by all visitors to the park. Mainly in the Anhinga or the Shark Valley trails, I always find family groups where the children keep a competitive count of their sightings of the alligators.

"Within the salt meadows here at the end of this world, green with thick-stemmed waterweeds glowing yellow and coral about the white marly water, the round-nosed dark alligators find their way along fresh-water inland streams, after their fierce matings, to make their nests..."

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, The Everglades: River of Grass

Alligator photograph "The King of the Everglades" © 1997 - Antonio Fernandez, from the Anhinha Trail

Female anhinga (Anhinga anginga), ready to eat a fish just caught. While the head and neck of the male anhinga is black, females exhibit a tan neck.

The anhingas skewer their fish prey with sharp, needlelike bills. Once a fish is caught this way, the bird plays with it, until finally in a move perfected for centuries, throws the fish into the air while waiting for it with the opened bill.

Note the alligator in the background, preparing itself to engulf --if possible-- the predator bird.

Anhinga photograph, Hunter hunted © 1997 - Antonio Fernandez, taken from the Anhinha Trail

Recommended for Further Reading:

Jean Craighead George, Everglades Wildguide, Division of Publications National Park Services, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C. 1988.

Herbert W. Kale, II, and David S. Maehr, Florida's Birds, Pineapple Press, Sarasota, Florida, 1990.

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