Hands down the best place in Florida is Blue Cypress Lake during the nesting season. This time of year only about 25 resident Osprey occupy the lake. A new operator of the marina took over earlier this year. No more tent camping and they did away with the boat rentals. The new operator of the marina is only there part time. You need to bring your own boat. During nesting season you can easily take a canoe along the West Bank to photograph the osprey. Like many lakes in Florida it is shallow so very dangerous when the winds pick up. If you're going to cross the lake you need a boat, canoe and kayak not recommended. The Osprey are only 12 to 25 feet above you heads as you paddle around. In the off season the resident osprey are scattered around the lake. https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-596823-1.html Yes, Mark Smith did do a video on this lake.
Now this time of year the population of Snail Kites hit an all time high. These can be found around the rim canals of Lake Okeechobee. Very hard to find bird, but easily found and photographed here in the winter.

I’ve made that trip twice. Both times I used full frame DSLRs (Canon 5D3 & 5D4, but brand matters little). I carried two, one with a 24-105 f4 IS, the other with a 100-400 f4.5-5.6 & a 1.4 tele adapter. I will carry the same next 2 trips as well.
I don’t particularly like wider angle lenses - photo merge shots at around f50-60 for panos are much better for the super wide prints I often make of them. The latter requires growing comfortable with hand-held series of shots for photo-merges, using the horizon for vertical alignment, plus wide overlaps for quality results. Tripods are a handicap on a vibrating boat, and clumsy to carry to and from shore on Zodiacs.
For shore trips there was only moderate use for the long lens. The 24-105 is sufficient most of the time.
If you don’t plan to make large prints, a good bridge camera with a big zoom range is all you need though. My wife has multiple amazing shots from her Samsung smartphone, and I’ve incorporated them into our slideshow.
Whatever you get, be thoroughly familiar with it before the trip begins - there are some truly amazing photo opportunities, and it would be unfortunate to miss them because of an error in camera settings or handling.

Donald, I have to take issue with you regarding not excusing Dan's "ignorance".

It's also been pointed out to me that I could have (should have?) looked up the answer to a question I asked on UHH.

Here's what I said at the time: "I don't always think of Google when a question pops up in my head while I'm reading a UHH thread. Also, in asking on UHH one hopes to get an answer based on someone's experience. Wading through web-based info can be very confusing at times. Almost any question raised on UHH can be answered, at least to some extent, by googling. Does that mean that one should not ask questions on UHH?"

My 2 cents worth....