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A week in the Everglades (1 Viewer)

TwitchEd

Active member
Advice please...

We're looking to spend a week in the Everglades next March (1st-8th) and was wondering if there was enough to hold us there at a relaxed pace for a whole week, especially if we included Big Cypress and Fakahatchee Strand too?

Most importantly, we were wondering if the trails in the southern section of the park would keep us occupied for three whole days?

Many thanks in advance!
 
Three days to explore the Everglades in late March should be more than enough. Visits to Anhinga Trail (freshwater slough), Long Pine Key (pinelands), Paurotis Pond (wading bird rookery), Snake Bight Trail (mangrove forest), Mahogany Hammock (tropical hardwood forest), and Flamingo + Eco Pond (mixture of mangrove, saltmarsh prairie, and campground) would all provide a well rounded birding experience.

I also would recommend spending a day birding around Miami. Yes, it is a big city. Yes, there is traffic. But the species diversity in winter in areas such as Matheson Hammock County Park, the C-357 Sparrow Fields, Cutler Wetlands, and A.D. Barnes Park often exceeds the park itself -- especially when it comes to wintering passerines like vireos, warblers, tanagers, and flycatchers.

Wakodahatchee Wetlands and Green Cay Wetlands in Palm Beach are also gorgeous and provide easy birding.

I would not recommend birding the keys at all. They are wonderful migrant traps but do not hold many birds in the winter season. It will be very slow.

Hope this helps,
 
Key Biscayne's Crandon Park can be great for shorebirds, but late winter birding for warbler and passerines is better on the mainland parks than Bill Baggs. It's more of a migrant trap.
 
How is the Oleta Park? I know it's a very large park. I've seen osprey from the intracostal side. I used to live close, but wasn't watching birds at the time
 
Oleta should be decent.

Honestly, any patch of native trees in Miami in winter can potentially have mixed feeding flocks of warblers, vireos, gnatcatchers, etc. Go out and explore! The tiny parks with just a few clumps of native trees near my house had Black-throated Blue, Black-throated Green, Magnolia, Yellow, Prairie, Black-and-white, Northern Parula, Palm, American Redstart, Blue-headed and Yellow-throated Vireo, Baltimore Oriole...just yesterday...even unassuming places can have birds if you look.
 
That's true, on my 5 mile drive to work yesterday I saw cattle egret, great egret, black vultures, and often a burrowing owl.
 
Carlos is steering you right. Would suggest keeping eye on e-bird while there. Never know what will pop up.
 
Don't forget Shark Valley. We spent three nights in the everglades last year and wished for more time. There are some pretty good boat rides out of Flamingo and Everglades City. You can see American Crocodiles at Flamingo.
 
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I also would recommend spending a day birding around Miami. Yes, it is a big city. Yes, there is traffic. But the species diversity in winter in areas such as Matheson Hammock County Park, the C-357 Sparrow Fields, Cutler Wetlands, and A.D. Barnes Park often exceeds the park itself -- especially when it comes to wintering passerines like vireos, warblers, tanagers, and flycatchers.

Just to say that the C-357 Sparow Fields no longer seem to exist. It's a construction site and they wouldn't allow me to enter when I was there recently :-C

Cheers
John
 
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