.dropcap { color: #838078; float: left; font-size: 82px; line-height: 60px; padding: 5px 8px 0 0; } Miles from shore, deeper in Everglades National Park than the public is allowed, I slowly sank to my ankles in mangrove muck under a low dome of twisted branches. Fish heads, feathers, and eggshells littered the ground. Pungent guano painted every leaf and branch; flakes of it sloughed off and hung in the air. Shadows passed overhead, and when I peered up through the canopy, I could glimpse herons and egrets rafting above like white pterodactyls—and then, a flash of spoonbill pink. Other birds squatted among the branches, croaking and chattering. Amid the disorienting avian conversation rang more familiar voices—those of the field biologists who let me tag along to this quarter-acre mangrove island called Diamond Key. Casey King hovered above me, braced between a branch and a tree trunk, peering into a stick-and-leaf nest. “Three eggs in 27!” she shouted...