Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary

I have the pleasure of living out in the estates, right by Corkscrew Sanctuary but I had never been there until this class.  It was interesting to see how different things are there even though they are only a few miles apart.  It was interesting to walk throughout the swamp and see how different things were.  At some parts of the walk the sun was shining through all the trees, everything looked dry and brittle, and it was HOT.  But then at other parts throughout the walk the trees were taller, it was more swamp like and a lot cooler.  The best part for me was being able to see the alligators at the end.  We also saw baby alligators with their mom.  There were a lot of them and according the workers there and some others I have talked to seeing the babies is a rare thing.  It was kind of a peaceful walk; all you really heard was nature because everyone tried to stay quite so we could see as much as possible.  I went with a group of people but I noticed that I was always a little bit behind them.  Something about walking through nature is just relaxing to me.  When you get to end of one of the pathways there is a look out that is really pretty.  It is like a huge open field with what looked like prairie grass and different little flowers.  I was amazed at how big some of the trees got when walking through it.  Some of them would curl around each other and just kept going.  Also there were different types of flowers when the land got lower and there was not as much sun.  It was much more colorful and was really pretty.  Also on our walk through the swamp we saw three black racer snakes.  One was trying to go up one the huge trees and the other two were just slithering around in the grass.  I seen plenty of snakes living out here, I even had a rattle snake at my front door one time, but I have never seen a group of snakes interacting before.  It was really interest to see the differences from my backyard to there.  It just goes to show how close things seem to be but yet how different they really are.  Unfortunately I did not get to see very main animals besides the alligators and the deer.  I just saw a lot of lizards and bugs.  When reading the information in the directions about the wood stork I thought we would see them as well, but again I did not see anything.  We did see a hawk, but I do not what kind it was, but it was really big.  Going onto the field trip I was thinking that the possibility of seeing deer was really good but we never saw any, although I did see one crossing my street on my way home, which I found to be rather ironic.