It's a Damn Petting Zoo

As is my custom, I visited the Everglades in February. And as usual I took pictures of the wildlife I saw.

The difference is that these shots were taken with my phone (iPhone 4). Which prompted my bestest birding buddy Patty to exclaim, "It's a damn petty zoo!" Not quite, but close.

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The first three were taken along the Anhinga Trail at Royal Palm, where the wildlife is quite habituated to people and concentrated because it's where the water is (February is the dry season there). The gators mostly just lie there. The cormorants, two different birds here, will react to your presence, but mostly just to look you over. The black vultures were fighting over a car crushed snapping turtle. They reacted to my approach as if I was just another contender for the prize. The skimmer flew to me, I was on the doc watching for manatees and it just flew in. In the manatee shot you can see my shadow holding the iPhone. And in the manatee shot you can also see scars of a recent encounter with a boat. Sadly, the habituation to humans is not always benign.