Six-Mile Cypress Slough

Friday March 31

Cardinal Air Plant or Tillandsia are a common sight

Blue Flag Iris

Six-Mile Cypress Slough Preserve can be a great place to do some birding, but there is more than birds to see. Wild flowers, wetlands flora, butterflies, snakes and lizards, gators and turtles and even fish.  Currently dry conditions are in place till the rainy season begins. The water levels have dropped significantly, concentrating fishes, gators and wading birds to the shrinking ponds and pools. Wild hogs have invaded the dried slough bottom, tearing up the ground in search of food.

Green Anole flashing his dewlap

Feral Hogs have moved into the slough as the waters recede

Alligators have been crowded into the shrinking pools

Florida Gar

Oscar,
an aggressive and invasive species introduced through the tropical fish hobby

Tilapia

Florida Gar with a Florida Flag Fish meal

Buttonbush

Big Footed Bug

Pond Cypress,

which is not very common in the slough

Bald Cypress, a predominate tree in the slough,

Some are hundreds of years old

The receding waters have also exposed this small turtle shell