Wetlands at the Florida Aquarium

In an earlier post I mentioned that my daughter's favorite place in Tampa is the Florida Aquarium. Her favorite part of the Aquarium is the Wetlands exhibit.

On our visit last Monday, in the Springs portion of the exhibit we found this peninsula cooter resting, but with head up and alert, on a fallen limb.


On a log below, this Barbour's map turtle seemed less than thrilled to be photographed.


Note that, in the linked article about Barbour's, the writer describes the Apalachicola River basin as "heaven", which is interesting considering Elvy Calloway's conjecture that it was the site of the Garden of Eden (see my post on Senecas, etc., below, linked at the beginning of this post).

A little futher along, Liz found and photographed this roseate spoonbill perched at the edge of the Mangrove Swamp sector.


The plumage trade of the late nineteenth century put some stress on the spoonbill population, but these birds are, fortunately, now fairly common around parts of the Gulf of Mexico coastline.

Unfortunately, the otters were snoozing in some dark recess of the exhibit. The gators were out, but difficult to photograph because of the high plexiglass walls separating them from visitors' fingers.