Wakodahatchee Wetlands

Haven’t been here for years, but a great discovery that’s not in most tour books. If you’re ever near Boca Raton find this place. The Seminole name means “created waters”. Indeed it is…by the Palm Beach County Water Utilities Department. Fifty acres created as a natural filtration system. And boy did it work.

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Believe it or not all this area was created (in an ongoing process) from highly-treated waste-water. It’s nutrients have attracted over 140 species of bird…and plenty of gators.

Turtles line up for a bit of sun. We saw four different varieties that day.

Marsha checks the guide book to help identify some swamp cabbage…or something. There is about a mile and a half of boardwalk throughout the wetlands.

A little blue heron seems pretty much unfazed by our presence.

Drying its wings before another dive, one of hundreds of anhingas and cormorants living high on the environment.

Rookeries everywhere. We catch mama feeding baby here.

Birders’ paradise….

 

Another flora and fauna “hidden treasure”, again by the water department, is the nearby Green Cay Nature Center. Our first time there and even larger and more spectacular than Wakodahatchee. Check that out too, as well as the better known Morikami Japanese Nature Center…very beautiful and different — manicured, precise, and a delicious place for lunch.

Tomorrow, deep into the Everglades.

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One Response to Wakodahatchee Wetlands

  1. rhoda says:

    dazzling photography! Joel are you going to eventually publish a book? You should.
    Rhoda

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