Florida Everglades Airboating

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Guillaume Capron.

One of the best places to spot an alligator is on a Florida Everglades airboat tour, which puts you right in the middle of an alligator’s natural habitat. American alligators are mostly found in the Southeastern United States. You can see them anywhere from Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina all the way south to the Everglades National Park in Florida. You can also find them as far west as the southern tip of Texas.

This is the eighth of 12 Things You Should Know about Alligators and Everglades Wildlife, a free eBook.

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Whether you live in Florida or you’re just visiting the sunshine state, you must add an exciting airboat ride through the Everglades to your bucket list.

Captain Doug decided to add a list of his favorite things into one convenient eBook called 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour, which has covered everything from the different native wild animals you may see, to the history and environmental impact of the Everglades.

Let’s recap……

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This is the eleventh installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

This is the ninth installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

You may have read or heard a news story over the past few years about the presence of pythons or anacondas in the Everglades. Although neither of these snakes are native to Florida, there have been sightings of them in the Eastern portion of the Everglades. Why is this?

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This is the eighth installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

The Everglades is known throughout the world for its abundant bird life. The warm, shallow, and vast “river” has attracted many types of birds to this region for thousands of years.

In the 1800s an artist named John James Audubon, wrote during a visit to south Florida, “We observed great flocks of wading birds flying overhead toward their evening roosts …. They appeared in such numbers to actually block out the light from the sun for some time.”

The Everglades is home to several species of large wading birds such as…

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This is the seventh installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

Raccoons
Most people don’t think about raccoons when they picture the marshes of the Everglades. However, it is actually very common to see raccoon families on your airboat tour. Typically, raccoons are nocturnal creatures, meaning they are active at night. However, in the Everglades, it is the tide that greatly influences their schedule. So, it is not unusual to see them active in the middle of the day!

The raccoons also tend to be a bit smaller than the raccoons found in the North. This is possibly due in part to our warmer climate. You may also see a….

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This is the sixth installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

Manatees are truly amazing creatures, which you may have the opportunity to see on your Everglades airboat tour. The manatee is Florida’s state marine mammal, and is a large aquatic relative of the elephant. Florida Manatees are grayish brown in color and have thick, wrinkled skin. Because of their size and the way they “graze” around, feeding on vegetation in the water, manatees are also fondly referred to as Sea Cows.

The front flippers of manatees help them steer or sometimes crawl through shallow water. They also have powerful flat tails that help propel them through the water. Despite their small eyes and lack of outer ears, manatees are thought to see and hear quite well. Manatees are large aquatic mammals, which means they are warm blooded, breathe air, don’t lay eggs, and nurse their young with milk.

Manatees also have a type of “hair”. Because fur gets heavy and cold when it is wet, manatees don’t need it. Instead, they have whiskers on their skin, as well as thick layers of fat to keep them warm. Here are some interesting facts about manatees:

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This is the fifth installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

Mangroves are one of the true Florida natives. Florida has an estimated 469,000 acres of mangrove forests. These mangroves are huge factors contributing to the overall health of the state’s southern coastal zone. They provide an ecosystem which traps and cycles various organic materials, chemical elements, and important nutrients.

The roots of a mangrove act not only as physical traps, but also provide a surface for various marine organisms to attach themselves. Many of these attached organisms can also filter water through their bodies and, in turn, trap and cycle nutrients.

Mangroves actually thrive in salty environments because they are able to obtain fresh water from the saltwater. Some mangroves secrete excess salt through their leaves, others are able to block absorption of salt at their roots. In Florida, there are 3 species of Mangroves:

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