When I was 14 years old, my family had visited Florida for a cruise, as well as visits to Disney World & the newly opened Epcot Center. We drove from Florida to Orlando that time (which I'm sure affected my decision to fly instead, but given the expense and time wasted in the airport, not sure I'd do it again that way), and on the way stopped at an airboat ride place. It was fun enough, but I don't recall having seen that much wildlife.
I wanted to bring the family to the Everglades for an airboat ride, and this looked like a pretty decent place. Ended up getting WAY more than I'd bargained for this time!!!
To start with, they had an animal show with birds, skunks, alligators, and even a lemur (not native to the Everglades, in case you didn't know). I've got some video that I may edit & post of that, the guy has a most unique voice. Afterwards, they had a real live alligator you could hold, which all but the youngest did for the photo op.
On to the airboat ride!!! This was the epic part of this event!!! Our boat captain would hold out bits of bread for specific birds at different points of the ride, and they would either land on him, hover by his hand or pick it out of the air as he would toss it to them.
Got out a good distance, and he cranked up the speed and hot dogged about the swamp, over razor grass and shallow waters.
Happened upon a great egret, which I'd spotted on our first pass around a little island, and he came back & tried to get close. He didn't get that close. I managed a decent picture anyway.
My oldest ran the video camera the whole time. We've got around 45 minutes of that.
Oh, and did we see any gators??? Oh yea!!! Like the birds, there were specific areas that the guide knew that certain ones would be at, and he'd call 'em out by name!!! The trick to calling alligators, he says, is to sound like a sick pirate (I'll likely edit some of that portion of video down to share how that would sound) and the gator would swim right out. I think around half a dozen we saw. There are three whose names I remember. Tripod (lost one of his arms in a territory dispute with a bigger gator) and Smiley (who'll swim right up to the boat with his jaws open) and Lilly.
Never did see Lilly, however. Lilly's layin' eggs.
