Meetup at Corkscrew

Karen and I were recently down in the Fort Meyers, Florida area for some birding.  We’ve never been to the south-western side of Florida before so there were lots of new places to explore.  High on our hotspot list was Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.  Located about 30 miles north of Naples, FL Corkscrew Swamp is a wonderful place to visit.  Established in 1954, Corkscrew now covers 13,000 acres which contain over 700 acres of Old-Growth Bald Cypress Forest.  Some of those Cypress Trees are over 500 years old!

The main attraction at Corkscrew is the 2.25 mile boardwalk that snakes through prairie wetlands and Cypress groves.  The boardwalk itself is an engineering feat as it zig-zags through the trees with hundreds of wooden pylons buried in the swamp to support the walkway.

It just so happened that GreatBirdPics member, and frequent contributor, Paul Demkovich lives in the Naples area so I arranged to meetup with Paul and his wife Shiela there.  We met Paul and Shiela on the Nova Scotia and Newfoundland birding trip a year ago and we’ve been in contact via GreatBirdPics ever since.  Here I am on the left with Paul meeting at the entrance to the boardwalk.

Although I can’t say it was very birdy that day, we enjoyed walking through the old Cypress trees, seeing alligators and Limpkin, and just catching up with Paul and Shiela.  One interesting thing I learned about Paul is that he has an extensive fossil collection and he recently donated some specimens to the Smithsonian and Field Museums.  One fossil was especially important as it documented the tail structure of an ancient fish.

We had a wonderful time together and hope to catch up again in the future.

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