Fun on Biolab Road

A young roseate spoonbill greeted us as we turned onto Biolab Road.  What an alluring name for a road!

                                This is what a black vulture does when it's really, really windy.

I like how he's using his tail as a brake, and he's clinging for all he's worth to the snag. Vulture feet are not strong in the clutching department, which is why they have to carry prey in their beaks.

Black vultures are a Florida fixture, and they call southwest Ohio their year-round home, but they're still pretty unusual to see in southeast Ohio, where we live. I have a feeling it's only a matter of time before they completely colonize my area. We have roadkill aplenty. You could live on roadkill around here, if you wanted to. Which I do not.

Bill had told me that Biolab Road was a must-see, and we were not disappointed. Phoebe said it led to the beach, and that seemed like a meet adventure for a mom and two cubs...drive down the road and wind up on Cape Canaveral's beach. We drove and drove, rolling slowly along, taking in the incredible wildlife along the way.

The kids loved the reddish egret, especially when I told them that birders call it the "drunken clown" for the way it staggers about in the shallows, following the lightning-fast movement of schools of fish which only it can see.

It throws out its wings for balance, making a spectacle of itself. To someone who doesn't know that it's fishing, it looks crazy, possessed, drunk.

And then it plunges its rapier bill straight down into the water to stab at little fishies.

 A far more placid feeding style distinguishes the roseate spoonbill. I felt incredibly lucky to be able to show this bird to my babies.

The spoonbills are more filter feeders, running that great appendage through the silt and snapping closed on whatever lives within.

They swing their great heads side to side, slowly sweeping through the shallows. 

They make pass after pass in an unconsciously lovely ballet.

Earlier in the day, we'd lucked upon a preening group of spoonbills along Black Point Wildlife Drive in Merritt Island NWR.  I quickly deployed the Leica scope and camera to digiscope their sickly green heads, ruby eyes and glorious crimson shoulders.

Could there be a much more convincing link between the dinosaurs and today's birds?

It was not much of a stretch to imagine duck-billed dinosaurs snapping to attention at the approach of a pack of Deinonychus, especially for Liam.

So long did we watch and admire the wading birds and snoozing gators that it finally became clear that we would never reach the beach before dark

and we decided that that was fine with us, because what could be better than this pastel sunset, with us all breathing the salt air, appreciating the heartbreakingly beautiful color. Color has been gone from our lives for months and months. We decided that all our color had drained down into Florida. We're very anxious to get it back, as rainy day follows rainy day and the crocuses struggle to bloom.

Phoebe snapped me in pursuit of egrets

and I snapped her in pursuit of sunsets

and it was all dreamily beautiful. We hated to see that sun sink, but it was kind enough to go behind some cutout palm trees, delighting Liam who thought it was time for the pterodactyl to swoop through, cackling, at any moment.

A snowy egret punched a white hole in the inky marsh as we said goodbye to another Florida day.

All landscape and car interior photos taken with  my Canon G-12, chunky little point and shoot genius box.

Liam's First Alligator

I will not lie. Liam's first and main reason for wanting to go to Florida was not together time with his mom and sister, although he loves that. No, he wanted to see a ten-foot-long lizard. He really, really wanted to see an alligator. So from the moment we came in over the runway at Orlando airport, we were straining our orbs for eyebumps in every ditch and puddle. But it would be a couple of days before we got lucky.

Driving along Black Point Wildlife Drive at Merritt Island NWR, I finally spotted the prehistoric pile of scalage that said "gator" to my unaccustomed eye. It would have been hard to miss this one, hauled out as he was on a warm winter's day. Holy smokes!

It was all I could do to get Liam to take his eyes off it long enough to snap the photo of a boy with longing, for now, fulfilled.

We got out the spotting scope to get a better look at this dozing beauty.

I don't know why, but every time I see a dozing 'gator, my first thought is that it has hauled out of the water to die. They just look dead. When they close their eyes, the eye seems to sink back into the head, and they really, really look dead. You can't discern any respiration. A sleeping gator defines "inert."

Until the Science Chimp bleats like a little lost fawn separated from its mama and maybe about to try to cross the creek...oh, hello there. Sorry to bother you, but we didn't want our first gator viewing to turn into a wake.

Thus satisfied that the 'gator was quite alive and thinking about venison, we moved the scope so the kids and I could appreciate that armored tail. Dinosaurs live!

It was to be a wonderful evening for 'gators. We proceeded from Black Point to the alluringly named Biolab Road, where a molten sunset pointed up the scalation on three more beautiful gators.

It was really too beautiful and primeval to be believed. And these weren't babies, either. Liam's first  gator was the biggest--gettin' on 12 feet, we guessed. 

This one, maybe 9 feet...about the length of my canoe...eek! I wondered what it would be like to canoe around a beast like that. Maybe FloridaCracker can tell us. Does your heart race when one swirls under you? Heck, a big carp can scare the granola out of me, rocking my boat...what about a gator longer than your own conveyance??

I couldn't resist a shot of Firehair admiring this gorgeous animal.

Another...maybe 7 feet.

Another conservation success story. It's hard to believe we almost hunted the American alligator into extinction, just for the bumpy "leather" it lent to fancy purses and cowboy boots. It seems so archaic, so ridiculous to exterminate such a magnificent beast for things like that. It seems so...human of us. I grew up thinking I'd never see an alligator, or a bald eagle, or a wood stork...they were all but gone in the mid-1960's.

Endangered species legislation works. Alligators, bald eagles, and wood storks are back. Brown pelicans, too--they were once on the brink of extinction, as amazing as that seems. It's just too bad that so many truly endangered species are languishing in the Endangered Species Waiting Lounge, left unprotected because it's economically inconvenient to list them.

 How could we keep taking the tops off Appalachian mountains if the cerulean warbler that lives on them were finally listed as an endangered species, and we were legally bound to protect its habitat? Better not list that one. See, that's how it works. Once we saw what a powerful conservation tool the ESA could be, it was imperative to remove its teeth.

What if we had to legally acknowledge that polar bears and Pacific walruses are endangered because their pack ice habitat is melting out from under them? Legally they're listed as threatened, so we're not bound to do anything to reverse this deeply alarming phenomenon. They're in the waiting room, too. And what about the seals, mainstay of polar bears, that need the pack ice for pupping? Do we expect them and the walruses to simply switch overnight to hauling out on land? Who needs a bunch of pack ice? We don't. So what if they do? 

Having gotten a bit off track, I am thankful for alligators and the legislation that allowed their populations to recover. Well over a million alligators now populate the ditches and swamps of the Southeast.  And I'm deeply thankful that there are still places where you can take your kids to see the oversized scaly wonders of the natural world. 

See it while it's here, folks. 

The Enchanted Forest

One of the official activities for Liam and me at the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival was to help the hugely capable and entertaining naturalist Joe Swingle lead a walk centered around gopher tortoises at the Enchanted Forest Sanctuary near Titusville, Florida. Now, what I know about gopher tortoises you could put in an overturned thimble, but Joe took care of all that. Besides, the tortoises were all snoozin' in their digs, because it had been so cold.  I was just along to help people see some stuff they might not have noticed, and Liam was toting Joe's gear and generally adding to the personability of the event. Phoebe came along, too! and so, to our delight, did Bill Webb.

About the first thing I noticed was some really scuzzy looking sabal palm fronds, and I wondered what might have scraped all the chlorophyll bearing layers off of them. So I turned the frond over and found an amazing network of frass and then tiny silken cocoons which I was too excited to photograph, wanting instead just to show it to the kids on the trip. Kids tend to get much more excited about natural history stuff than do most adults. No wonder I get along well with kids.

photo by Floridacracker

See that nasty pale area near the rachis? Well, the cocoons and frass networks were under the leaf.

So in Chimp CSI mode I dig around and carefully opened one of the silken cocoons, a process which fascinated the kids, and found this little culprit

which I could tell was going to eclose into a very small but long-winged moth. Which species, as yet unknown, but butterflies make chrysalis capsules, not silken cocoons, so we knew it was a moth. Cool!

Photo by Machele White from bugguide.net

When I got home I Googled it and found our pupa to be a palm leaf skeletonizer, Homaledra sabalella.  Which is a pretty cool name for a tiny, unsurprisingly brown moth. I dunno. I just liked the idea that there was a moth whose caterpillars were out scrapin' sabal palms for all they were worth.

We did some other things like percolation tests which we all enjoyed, seeing visible evidence that organic matter in soils (leaves, sticks and the like) greatly slows percolation in Florida's sand.

Bill Webb's photo of me and Liam, which he titled Science Chimp and Cub.

There was mistletoe in the oaks

growing in green balls in the leafless trees, reminding me of seeing the old black men with their car trunks full of mistletoe they'd shot out of the oaks in Tidewater Virginia, selling it on the old highway to Williamsburg, when I was a kid. 

Looking down, there was Innocence, Houstonia procumbens   (Rubiaceae), which reminds me of its close cousin Honesty, or roundleaf bluet (Houstonia coerulea). Only in albino midget form. I also like the idea of plants with just one name. Innocence. Honesty. Chastity. Cher. 

Moving along the trail, we found fresh bobcat pugmarks, which about made my eyes roll back in my head. Bobcats are not nearly the huge deal in Florida that they are in Ohio. Oh gosh I love bobcats. I love the idea of bobcats. I have seen three wild bobcats in my life (first in Texas; second in North Dakota, and third about this time last year, 8  miles from our house!) So I could die now and still be happy.  Here's my hand for scale. That's a big ol' pussycat.

And even better, a fresh bobcat log!

At this point I'm down on hands and knees trying to figure out how the earth got piled up near this turd with no visible scratch marks from the cat. Derr....I'm mumbling to myself when a voice comes from behind me, surmising that this is the sign of dung beetles working from below. Oh, now, I'm loving that, because we are short on dung beetles in Ohio. Lots of dung, not many dung beetles. Gotta do something about that.

And the voice belonged to...

Floridacracker! (pictured here with his candy-apple red, nattily spotless JEEP, a vehicular extension of his personality if I have ever seen one)

who made the trip over to the festival to meet me and the kids!

I am not sure I will be able to adequately convey how much it meant to me to meet this man at last, having enjoyed his creative output for years via his blog, Pure Florida.

In  my next post, I will try.

Waves of Grace

 We were the only people in sight on the Canaveral beach in late January. Just like we like our beaches. Not that we see many, being Ohioans.

The kids had to get their feet wet. I knew they'd get their jeans wet, too, but there was no fighting it. We'd deal with the sand and the dampness later.

It wasn't really beach weather, as evidenced by the windbreakers and sweatshirts, but when would we have another chance to be in the ocean?

 I left them to play with about a dozen parental warnings about riptides and rogue waves, trusting their hydrophobic anthropoid instincts to carry them through. They're careful kids. I walked and felt the foam with my toes, walked and felt the sand with my tired feet, studied my prints and made some more.

We made two visits to the beach at Cape Canaveral. The second time, they wore bathing suits under their shorts.

What is it about the ocean that can soothe us and make us delight in just being there, being alive, walking and thinking about nothing and everything at once?

Is it the rush of the ocean mother's heartbeat in our chests and ears? Is it the half-remembered origin of life coming to the fore? I watched my children walk and talk, knowing that before long the leggy blonde boy would tower over his statuesque sister.

Neither of them believes me when I say that.

For now, Phoebe is content to let her brother crack her up as he meets the ocean in a power-slide.

She turns to laugh with me as, caught clowning and off guard, he tumbles down...

and then, being Phoebe, helps him back up.

 He adores her, shadows her every move for five days and nights, and she is almost always kind to him.
She was 3 1/2 when he came into the world, and it was clear she was ready to care for someone else. I'll always be grateful that they get along so well.

I watch them as the brown pelicans glide by.  I am never without something beautiful to watch.

I want to paint the perfection of this young pelican in watercolors; I know just which colors I'd choose.
I mix them in the mind's palette.

Thank you for your perfect wing, your unfathomable ghastly grace; your flat doll's eye and impossible bill.

You surf the waves with a few dynamic flaps and endless sails, riding on a pillow of air just over the water's surface.

 When I was a child moving into my teens I felt awkward and ungainly, and I wondered why I had been born in the body of such a homely primate. I wanted to be a deer, an antelope, an eagle. I despaired at the clumsiness of my species. I was blind to my own lithe grace.

 Having children disabused me of that notion; it opened me to the loveliness of my own kind. My own grace has faded, but I've caught lightning here in these slender vessels, and I gaze at it, newly fascinated.

 The sun catches their hair and strokes their lean forms and I catch my breath and hold it.

I thank the sea for giving us a taste of the carefree ease of summer, and wish the sun would hang low in the sky for a few more hours. I don't want to go back to the hotel; I don't want to go back to gray flannel Ohio. I want to stay with my beautiful ones in this timewarp, the turquoise sea rushing around us, cancelling noise, soothing us into reflection and meditation.