Hiking Cypress Creek Preserve South

Some nice moments in this week's episode.

Plenty of wildlife to see and I actually ended up filming more than I even knew. In one clip that didn't make the final cut, I'm struggling to get some video of a woodpecker. Looking back at the footage, there's a barred owl staring straight into the camera that I never saw. Thankfully I did get to spend some quality time with another owl earlier, so no complaints there.

Another surprise I found while editing this video was a praying mantis. I'm filming a bunch of yellow flowers at 6:12 and if you look close you'll see it staring back at you. So now I've filmed a mantis but still never seen one in the wild.

I have to admit, I think I started this hike a little too early. Too dark to film at first, and a lot of the animals I saw were obscured anyway. The early morning owl was nice, but the better deer footage was later in the day. A major highlight was finding a gator in the last little water hole in the swampy area. It was feeding on anything and everything it could find in there.
After that I found yet another raccoon in a tree. My year of the raccoon phrase still stands.
Besides some birds and insects, I found a couple lizards and gopher tortoises. So many of my favorite things.

Also, thanks ‪@antsy_does‬ for helping scout this place out.

This was a more popular destination than I imagined. I definitely saw more people than anything but it wasn't bad when you consider how much I was able to see. Trying to avoid where other people were did change my planned route, but as I said, it all worked out.