ELC

The Environmental Learning Center or ELC (http://discoverelc.org/) is one of the places my Brother-In-Law George volunteers at while he is down here in Florida and yesterday afternoon he took me, Flo, Ruby, Curtis and his wife Pat for a walk and talk through it. We started in the visitor center and then we went on a walk into the Mangrove swamp, well on the boardwalk that goes through the Mangroves. There are three kinds of Mangrove trees in this part of Florida, Red, White and Black. These trees are well adapted to the brackish water they live in. The Red Mangrove has what are called prop roots which not only support the tree and supply oxygen to the roots but they also trap mud and silt and over time increase the soil they are in. The Black Mangrove tree excretes salt through it’s leaves.
 
After going out to the canoe dock were George does most of his volunteer work, he is one of the guides for the canoe trips, we headed off to George’s trail (he says it's some other George but I have my doubts). On George’s Trail there is a place called George’s Perch were you get above the tree tops and have a great view of an Osprey nest. While I was taking some pictures of the nest with my 10x zoom, the male osprey came and perched on the top of a dead tree not 30 yards from us. He sat there for at least 5 minutes, I got some great shots, talk about being in the right place at the right time. On the way back to the visitor center we got a little lost and it took us awhile to find our way out, it is not all George’s fault, all though he was the leader of the group, the maps at the intersections were not very clear. We made it back to the visitor center with the whole group intact so the trip was a success. I had a very good time, thanks George.

View Full Album