I envy those world travelers who get to see all kinds of cool critters! Us local yokels just have to make do with the nearby…
Bald eagles are plentiful in Florida-- more breeding bald eagles than any US state except Alaska. We handle them commonly here. I can look out my window right now and see the four presently on site. But they remain rare in many other places.
West Indian Manatees are commonly seen nearby too. We don’t handle them here, but we occasionally help with rescues.
Neither do we handle sea turtles, though several rare species nest on our beaches. Leatherbacks are the rarest of these. Occasionally we’ll get a baby, rescued by some bather, but we turn them over to sea turtle specialists.
We also have Audubon’s (Crested) Caracaras- total population perhaps 450 or so, in the grass prairies surrounding Lake Okeechobee. They are a “disjunct population”-- you won’t find them again until you travel all the way around the Gulf to the Texas / Mexico border.
Last week we led a tour group into Everglades National Park, where we found (observed) American crocodiles. I guess those are the rarest species nearby.
Once, back in the late 1970’s, I followed an Ivory Billed Woodpecker around the Big Cypress Swamp for about an hour. I had both binoculars and a 35mm camera with 200mm lens, but alas not a speck of film. I would have double-exposed any already used film for such shots. The bird, a male, flew casually from tree to tree, occasionally drumming. I followed, covering perhaps a mile during the encounter. Several times I was within 50 feet of the bird. There was no mistaking its identity. The only similar bird is the Pileated Woodpecker, and I’m quite familiar with them. Finally, I just got bored following the bird. I made my way out to my car, drove like a maniac a dozen miles to a gas station/tourist dive, grabbed a roll of film, threw some bills on the counter, and drove even more maniacally back. Of course, the bird was nowhere to be found.
Perhaps relevant to this thread is the book Last Chance to See, coauthored by Douglas Adams, best known for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It chronicles observations of some of the world’s rarest creatures.