I'd never seen manatees in the wild before this trip to Florida's Nature Coast. Yesterday, while I was looking at some riverfront property, the realtor pointed out to me a baby manatee and its mother swimming along the bank (first photo). A closer look revealed a yearling calf and two others, one a pregnant female, for a total of five manatees swimming up the Weeki Wachee River.
Today it was cloudy and chilly, so we decided to drive up to Homosassa and visit a wildlife park on the river. They had an amazing variety of mostly native animals, some which I'd never seen: red wolves (once native, now bred in captivity), all kinds of birds such as ibises, flamingos, wood storks, roseate spoonbills, sand-hill cranes, white herons and pelicans, hawks and owls, foxes, a Florida panther and two bobcats, black bears and even a hippopotamus that was donated to the park after being used in a film. All the animals that are able to survive in the wild are free to come and go as they please; only those that can't make it on their own are kept in captivity.
The highlight of our visit was the manatee feeding. A park volunteer gets in the 72-degree water of the Homosassa Spring and hand-feeds sweet potatoes to six captive manatees. Other volunteers drop heads of lettuce and cabbage leaves in the feeding area. There is an underwater viewing house where visitors can see the manatees feeding underwater along with thousands of native fish such as large-mouth bass and tarpon.
Just outside the captive area one can see many other wild manatees on the river. Looking from an observation deck I counted about seven or eight, and one baby swimming by. They winter in these warmer spring-fed rivers because they cannot survive in the colder temperature of the Gulf water. These manatees have so much "awww..." quotient--everyone loves them!
