I returned Friday afternoon from several days in South Florida, scouting and photographing in Big Cypress National Preserve and the northern Everglades.  I have a huge backlog of images to go through so I’m not yet ready to blog about it.  Today I’ll just post this teaser  because I know some of you are alligator fans (hi Calvin!).

I see alligators all the time here in Florida and often spot younger ones.  But I only remember seeing babies together with their mother once before, up in Paynes Prairie. Last Wednesday morning in the Shark Valley portion of the Everglades I saw several  different momma gators with their 1 – 2 year old babies close by.

A momma gator with five babies.

These are wild animals in their natural environment in the Everglades.

A different mom with six (eight?) babies.

I made them from the tram ride in Shark Valley.  Highly recommended!  The guide was very knowledgable and let us know where to spot all sorts of things.  He also knew a lot about these animals:

• Alligators are one of the few reptile species that care for their young.
• Only the females take care of the babies – the males aren’t involved (well, except at the beginning!).
• The female defends the nest from predators and helps the babies hatch and make it into the water.
• She’ll continue to provide protection for a year or two.
• The hatchlings are 6 – 8 inches long and grow 9 – 10 inches a year at first, so the ones in these photos are less than two years old.
• After a couple of years, the juveniles will move away (or get chased away by mom) and it’s time for her to mate again and start over.
• Alligators normally ignore humans.  But you should always keep your distance and respect the animals.  Our guide said to stay at least 15 feet away (some say 30 – 60 feet is better).  However, alligator moms can be especially aggressive defending their nests and young.  If you see one in the wild,  be very cautious.  Always back off if the animal hisses, starts paying attention to you, or moves toward you at all.  They are  faster than you are, especially over short distances.

The two photos in this post are fairly high resolution and worth looking at a little closer.   But one of my readers (thanks Lynn!) pointed out that not everyone knows how to zoom into them on Flickr. So if you want to zoom in:

• Click on the photo in the blog, which will open the same image inside Flickr.
• It’ll probably already be higher res, but Flickr scales it to the size of your display and window.  To see it best, maximize your browser window.
• Then you should see a cursor with a little + sign inside a circle.  This means you can zoom in a little further.  Click once to zoom and use your mouse to move around inside the photo.
• Some images are detailed enough to support a second level of zoom.  If so, you’ll see another + and you can click again to zoom in even further.

Take a look!

I need to finish going through my photos from the trip and I’m looking forward to writing about other things I saw.  More to come!

You can view a bunch more of my alligator photos in this folder on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/albums/72157625316066537

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2020, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved