Paynes Prairie Preserve, La Chua Trail, FL

We had to go to this wonderful place twice!  Paynes Prairie Preserve near Gainesville is amazing!  The preserve encompasses 121,000 acres. Some of it's permanent residents are alligators, a herd of wild horses and bison, yes you read this correctly! Seasonal birds include thousands of sandhill cranes many of which had left, so we were told, right before we got there. However, we still saw a lot of them!

 It is important that you reach this area from the La Chua Trailhead:

look at all those gators!  behind them are a couple of wood storks

 The fact is that the preserve is so large you may not see bison.  We were lucky enough to see two in the distance:

two bison butts;)

limpkin

great egret with several small white and one blue heron

blue heron

love this pic:)

across the pond is a blue heron rookery, you do have to look closely

a red hooded merganser and apparently a rare sight in the area!

green heron

this guy is huge but it still looked like he might have something in his throat

in the distance and through the morning mist I caught some of the horses running with sandhill cranes in the foreground 

sandhills galore!