Despite the excruciating heat and humidity the field trip to the corkscrew swamp sanctuary turned out to be a fun and very educational endeavor. When I first arrived at the sanctuary I wasn’t sure what to think, I had in my mind that it was going to be a small area of protected land with a few planet species along with a little bit of animal diversity. To my surprise when I got there this sanctuary was enormous, there were birds, bugs, plants, and trees everywhere. As I walked up to the front door of the entrance I saw the life-machine. It is very welcoming and scary at the same time to know that within the living machine the water in the first state of its cleaning is as clean as 90% of all drinking water around the world. To my understanding the natural fresh water on our planet is diminishing, we as a whole (man kind) must find a way to filter either salt water or other contaminated water. Seeing this living machine shows how our worlds technology is being put to good use and finding adaptive ways to conserve and elicit sustainability.
Once I made it on to the board walk I initially felt that I had almost taken a step back into the past. Seeing the lush vegetation and the birds flying around, it was great to see nature in its primal form, besides the board walk the swamp look like it not been touched for hundreds of years. Continuing my walk down the board walk I began to notice some irregularities. For this time of the year “wet season” and this to be a swamp, there was not very much water. I took a picture of a measuring stick to see how much water this is but it was stuck straight in the ground with no water surrounding it at all to be measured. I did not think much of it until I came to two men that worked for the sanctuary and they explained how the wet and dry seasons are marked, and this is by hurricane season. Once the hurricanes begin hitting and precipitation is more frequent the water level of the swamp will begin to rise. These men also pointed out to me a female alligator lying in a puddle. I was instantly intrigued and this excitement grew even more when they pointed out that the female was actually a mother of 9 baby alligators resting on a log in front of her. I began to speak with these gentlemen more and the spoke of estivation, which is when an alligator is almost hibernating during summer. They mentioned this because the male alligator was performing this task in the nest that they had created. During this estivation the alligator lives off the fat that they store in their tails. Another unique thing that the men pointed out to me was a red shouldered hawk. At first they were looking to see if he was feeding but they came to realize that he was doing what they called “anting”. “Anting” is a term that they use when a bird spreads their wings while sitting in the sun in hopes to baked the insects and mites out of their feathers.
From this field trip I gathered a completely new appreciation for what our environment has to offer us. It was great being able to look out off the boardwalk at the lookout point and see nothing but vegetation. It is refreshing to know that we still have parts of our world where our environment hasn’t be tampered with or overcome with the growth of our societies.
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