Big Cypress National Preserve, part 3

Part 3 of our trip into Big Cypress: As we continued on down the dirt road we saw even bigger gators down in the canal.

Here is a dandy fellow just sunning himself beside the water in the canal.
This appeared to be a mommy with 2 smaller "baby gators" together. You can just see the back end of one of the babies at the top right of the photo.

There hasn't been much rain here so far this year and this pool of water has shrunk away from the roots of the Cypress trees. That didn't deter these 2 lovely gators as they lie very still and probably are just thinking those alligator thoughts!

As we came to the end of the dirt road we saw this tree full of large birds and we thought they looked like a variety of vulture.

We had a totally awesome day here at Big Cypress. It took us over 2 hours to drive the whole 26-mile loop road, but it was worth it. I've finally seen real alligators in the wild and not just at the zoo.