★GPO: 1987—181-917/60504
[Preface] vii [America’s Subtropical Wonderland] 1 [Pine Rockland] 7 [Tree-Island Glades] 12 [Mangrove Swamp] 16 [Florida Bay and the Coastal Prairie] 21 [Big Cypress Swamp] 26 [Plant-and-Animal Communities] 29 [Tropical Hardwood Hammock] 30 [Cypress Head] 35 [Bayhead] 38 [Willow Head] 40 [Web of Life in the Marsh] 42 [Alligator Hole in the Glades] 45 [Discovering Everglades Plants and Animals] 49 [Air Plants] 52 [Mammals] 59 [Birds] 64 [Reptiles and Amphibians] 70 [Fishes] 72 [Animals without Backbones] 75 [Indians of the Everglades] 77 [Appendix] 80 [Glossary] 81 [For Reading and Reference] 84 [Rare and Endangered Animals] 86 [Checklist of Mammals] 87 [Checklist of Birds] 88 [Checklist of Reptiles and Amphibians] 96 [Checklist of Trees] 98
EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK
[High-resolution Map]
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PREFACE
The shimmering waters of the [everglades] creep silently down the tip of Florida under warm subtropical skies. In a vast, shallow sheet this lazy river idles through tall grasses and shadowy forests, easing over alligator holes and under bird rookeries, finally mingling with the salty waters of Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico in the [mangrove] [swamps]. From source to sea, all across the shallow breadth of this watery landscape, life abounds.
[Everglades] National Park is to most Americans an Eden where birds, mammals, reptiles, and orchids find sanctuary. Sunshine sparkles on [sloughs] teeming with fish, and on [marshes] where wildflowers bloom the year around; it shines on tree islands where birds roost and deer bed down. In this semitropical garden of plant-and-animal [communities], every breeze-touched glade, every cluster of trees is a separate world in which are tucked yet smaller worlds of such complexity that even ecologists have not learned all their intricate relationships.
This book has been written to help you see how the many pieces of this [ecological] puzzle fit together to form a complex, ever-changing, closely woven web of plants, animals, rock, soil, sun, water, and air.