Category Archives: Trip reports

Shameful shit

May 18, 2014

I have no words to fully express my shock and profound sadness on finding this magnificent animal, head and neck crushed by a cretinous driver, in Ocala National Forest yesterday. I’ve been fantasizing about photo ops of an EDB crossing a forest road for several years now; this was not the picture I had envisioned. We watched with disgust and disbelief as he slowly writhed and tried to gape while the last spark faded from his defiant eyes.

Crotalus ad DOR_05172014-08_Ocala NF FR05

A 4′, heavy-bodied healthy eastern diamondback crossing a pale sand road in Ocala National Forest. This animal was run over intentionally.

What kind of deeply depraved mindset does it take for someone to do this?

Some of my Facebook friends captured some of the thoughts that occurred to me, and some that didn’t.

“Damn, Peter, that ruined my day. People suck. Some people suck.” – John Jett

Ours too, JJ.

“Only someone unhappy would do this.” – Mary Ohlman Shaperow

Unhappy and morally retarded, Mary.

“The real issue, is that it’s really hard to change people’s minds on this, it is really, really entrenched in so many…just ignorance multiplied and taught to others.” – Chris Kincaid

Education is one answer, Chris. But it’s futile when dealing with closed minds.

“Oh man, I hate hate hate hate hate to see this. I’m preaching to the choir here, but I truly can’t understand how/why so many people aren’t able or willing to respect this amazing (and very important) species.” – Janson Jones

Keep preaching, Janson. You make a difference.

“That is FUCKED UP. Period.” – Patrick McGowan

Right on, Patrick. Right on.

Lekking in DeLeon Springs

1 Reply

March 8, 2014

To me, one of the most amazing achievements in field ornithology and bird photography of the last decade or two is the bird of paradise project, sponsored by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. During the 8 years of this project, evolutionary ecologist Ed Scholes and biologist/photographer Tim Laman travelled 18 times to New Guinea, the center of diversity of these magnificent birds, to document and film the courtship behavior of all 39 species comprising the family Paradisaeidae. Ever since I obtained Cooper and Forshaw’s stunning 1977 masterpiece, The Birds of Paradise and Bower Birds, and spent hours poring over its oversized plates depicting their lavish colors and hypertrophied plumage, I’ve been in love with these birds. Outrageous sexual dimorphism and bizarre courtship behaviors, along with their exotic locale, made these birds seem otherworldly and alien to me. And they might as well be on another planet – I’ll never see one in the flesh. But I’ve seen something nearly as enchanting and mystical, in a residential neighborhood in lovely DeLeon Springs.

Tuesday morning began as most mornings this winter have. Despite forecasts of clearing skies and warming temperatures by mid-morning, it was a gray, cold, misty morning when John Serrao and I left for a birding cruise through Ocala National Forest. We had faint hopes that the warming temps might even produce a herp or two crossing the roads, but that was a fantasy. The dismal, dreary weather and dull light persisted throughout the morning. But we saw birds – lots of warblers and other wintering/migrant passerines were active, including some of the largest flocks of yellow-rumped warblers I’ve seen this season. As I’ve noticed on several other occasions over the last several weeks, many of the yellow-rumps were feeding on the ground, sometimes in the road, often along with palm warblers and chipping sparrows. Yellow-rumped warblers have one of the largest repertoires of feeding behaviors of any of the parulids; I wonder how this is related to their overwhelming abundance and wide range of habitats they use.

Yellow-rumped warblers are mainly foliage-gleaners, but will also feed on the ground, engage in flycatching, and feed on fruits and seeds at times

Despite the less than ideal weather, we actually managed to see a reasonable number of cool birds, including yellow-throated, orange-crowned, palm and pine warblers, ovenbirds, singing northern parulas, blue-headed vireos, hermit thrushes, ruby-crowned kinglets (occasionally displaying the full red crest to each other – just one more indication that testosterone levels are on the rise), Florida scrub jays, and so on. A thoroughly enjoyable morning, but mostly lacking in photo opportunities.

Despite the weather, singing northern parulas were one more bit of evidence that Spring is actually here.

Ruby-crowned kinglets are showing their red crests more often these days. They just won’t do it for me when a camera is aimed at them.

Most passerines were sticking close to cover and concentrating on feeding. This hermit thrush was a welcome exception.

As small, energy-limited passerines often do on cold or inclement days, most of the birds we saw were fixedly engaged in feeding. Maintaining or building up fat reserves seems to take precedence over most other activities on days like these. Response to pishing and playback was brief and minimal. We did lots of looking, relatively little shooting.

Scavenging bald eagle in the scrub

The best photo op we had in the forest was a nearly mature bald eagle feeding on roadkill raccoon on the shoulder of US19, along with a flock of black and turkey vultures. The eagle flew up into a lichen-covered oak skeleton as we approached, but gave us extended looks for several minutes, as cars and trucks zipped by.

Part of the DeLeon Springs peacock flock

The trip home produced our most memorable sighting of the day. There is a neighborhood in DeLeon Springs I often drive through when going to Woodruff or other locations north of DeLand that is home to one of the largest flocks of Indian peacocks I’ve seen. At times more than a dozen birds can be found in one small yard. That’s quite an impressive spectacle at any time of year. On Tuesday, we witnessed what is probably a common sight to those used to living with peacocks, but which I had never seen in its entirety – the full display of a peacock in peak breeding plumage. Absolutely mind-blowing. Charles Darwin once wrote that the “sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!”, because he couldn’t fathom how natural selection could have produced such an overblown, seemingly useless adornment. It led him to develop his principle of sexual selection, hypothesizing that extravagant features such as the peacock’s tail have evolved in response to females’ preference to mate with males that have the most striking accoutrements. Evolutionary biologists have embraced Darwin’s principle of sexual selection, but still argue over the specifics of the mechanism. Why would females choose to mate preferentially with the most gaudy males?

Indian peacock (Pavo cristatus)

And what a gaudy display it is – I had seen males in low level display before, fanning the ocellus-adorned plumes of their tail feathers. I was surprised to learn that the prominent plumes with the startling ocelli (eyespots) are not true tail feathers (rectrices) at all – they are highly modified upper tail covert feathers, like the yellow feathers on the rump of a yellow-rumped warbler. But I had never seen the full display, which is prolonged, graded, and complex. It begins with a slight spreading and elevation of the train, but progresses to a towering display in which the train is held perpendicularly over the back. At its peak, the male quivers the train for several seconds in what seemed to me to be an almost orgasmic burst of pride. It reminded me a bit of this classic Saturday Night Live skit. As females walked by, paying no attention whatsoever to the displaying male, he slowly rotated to track their passage and show his erect train to best advantage.

The true tail feathers (rectrices) can be seen here behind the plumes, which are really upper tail coverts.

A moderate-intensity display.

A high-intensity display. The train is held perpendicularly over the back, and the male quivers the plumes for a second or two. The female ignored his efforts.

Not surprisingly, Indian peacocks have a polygynous breeding system, like many of the most spectacularly dimorphic birds or paradise. In these systems, males contribute nothing to reproduction other than their sperm. In the wild, females choose among several available males who display simultaneously in an arena-like location called a lek. In some lekking species, the male that occupies the central, preferred location in the lek obtains nearly all of the matings with sexually receptive females. Clearly, in such systems it is a great advantage to be a little gaudier than nearby males.

Full display.

Because males in these polygynous species have been freed of all parental duties and investments other than contributing a set of chromosomes (and centrioles), they often evolve spectacular plumages and displays to advertise the quality of their genes. That, presumably, is why females select the gaudiest males. Only males of superior genetic quality can afford to invest the time and energy in producing these extravagant displays, and by mating selectively with the showiest males, females ensure their offspring will be of high genetic quality. Further, their sons will inherit the genes for these high-quality displays, and are more likely to be successful as sires once they are mature.

What female could resist this gorgeous male? In fact, they all did. Maybe persistence is the key.

Anyway, that’s the way the system is supposed to work. Studies of mate selection by Indian peahens (the female of the species; only the male is a peacock) have produced mixed results. Some studies have shown that females do seem to prefer males with their full complement of ocelli over manipulated males whose ocelli have been selectively trimmed, but there also seems to be relatively little variation in the number of ocelli among unmanipulated male birds. There is no evidence that females prefer males with longer trains, even though train length is correlated with the diversity of MHC (major histocompatibility complex) genes in males. A seven-year study of peafowl in Japan showed that train characteristics played no part in female choice of mates, and further, that the extravagance of a male’s train was not correlated with other measures of his physical condition.

As is often the case, the reality of nature is more complex and perplexing than our simplistic models and hypotheses suggest.

Hunting ghosts

6 Replies

Emeralda Marsh Conservation Area

February 23, 2014

The third weekend in February is a date I look forward to all winter long. That’s when the driving loop at Emeralda Marsh Conservation Area opens to traffic, and every year I return on that weekend, mostly to look for cool birds and whatnot, but also to relive many great memories of the thousands of hours I’ve spent there and pay homage to this lovely natural resource. It’s a pilgrimage of sorts.

For nearly seven years, beginning in January 2000, I visited Emeralda once a week to do bird censuses for the St. Johns River Water Management District. I made the 45-minute drive from DeLand to Lisbon, and back, nearly 350 times during those years. Looking back I’m still incredulous that I got paid to do something I loved so much. I half-expect one of Rick Scott’s goons to show up at my door any day to tell me the state wants its money back.

It’s hard to overestimate how much you can learn about seasonal changes in the natural history of an area simply by going back to the same place over and over again, at all times of year and in all conditions.

This blue-headed vireo was in a small mixed-species flock working the hammock at the entrance to the wildlife drive.

But that gig ended in October of 2006, and since then, I’ve been reduced to merely one more of the great unwashed who must wait for the 3-month window when the Water Management District opens the drive. I’m sure they have legitimate reasons for the restricted driving access to this rather large wetland, but it’s somewhat incredible to me that it isn’t open at other times of the year to the driving public, save for hunter access during duck season. Fall migration at Emeralda can be overwhelming. The huge numbers of yellow warblers that use the wetland edges in August and September during their passage through the state should be sufficient justification for opening it then as well.

Of course, the entire area is open to biking and hiking year-round, so only lazy malcontents like me, who aren’t willing to hump the several miles between the parking areas and the best birding spots, have reason to complain. So I do. In my defense, it’s hot as shit out there in August.

Female or juvenile northern harrier.

The ghost in reference is the male northern harrier, the so-called gray ghost. Every February I naively fantasize that this will be the year I finally get a photo op of these big, gorgeous raptors. Every year I’m disappointed. But not too much. I nearly always see at least one or two female or immature harriers, though getting close enough to photograph them well is a tall order in itself. For whatever reason, females and female-like immature birds, greatly outnumber males in every area I’ve ever seen them. I see dozens of harriers every winter, but only 1 or 2 adult males, if I’m lucky.

Northern harriers are somewhat unusual among raptors in that males are often polygynous, having up to five mates at a time. But that’s not due to unbalanced sex-ratios – at birth, sex ratios are apparently 1:1. Despite being philanderers, male harriers don’t rule the roost. Females are dominant to males, and prevail in nearly all aggressive encounters. Perhaps social interactions between the sexes force males into using slightly different habitats and from being as behaviorally conspicuous as the females.

Regardless, the hunt to photograph the gray ghost today was yet one more resounding failure, though I did see a couple of harriers at Emeralda. One of them was at a considerable distance in bad light, and I half-convinced myself it might have been a male.

Wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum)

But the trip as a whole was anything but a failure. The wildlife drive at Emeralda Marsh is no Black Point; it can be pretty uneventful on slow days. But there is always something cool to see there, if your definition of cool is appropriately broad.

The drive to EMCA this morning was mostly in moderate to dense fog, but I was driving through gorgeous rural countryside along lightly traveled Lake County Road 42, which traces the southern boundary of Ocala National Forest for much of it’s length, so the drive was quite peaceful and relaxing. The ill-defined features of the surrounding habitat matched my state of mind – I had no clear idea or expectations of what I would find.

Palm warblers were abundant in both upland and wetland habitats throughout the morning.

As it turned out, though the fog cleared by 7:30 or so when I got to the northern end of the conservation area, it remained cloudy most of the morning. Cloudy, calm, with high humidity and mild temperatures. Perfect conditions for prolonged high levels of bird activity throughout the morning.

And spring was in evidence everywhere. Roadside vegetation, including forbs and woody plants, was exploding with new growth. Winter crucifers like wild radish and poor-man’s-pepper were blooming in profusion, willow catkins were in full anthesis and new foliage was appearing as well, and budburst was evident in many of the trees of the hammocks and swamps. There’s an old idea that’s been tossed around for years in avian ecology to try to explain the huge increase in breeding bird diversity of upland habitats in the northeastern U.S., compared to the southeast, and especially Florida. The idea is that the compressed growing seasons further north actually produce a much more intense burst of productivity in spring than do comparable habitats of southern climes, and that this huge burst of productivity supports a much higher diversity of higher-level consumers such as insectivorous birds. That may be true, but it’s hard to imagine a much greater burst of productivity than is going on in many Florida habitats right now.

Wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum)

At the Yale-Griffin Canal, the first stop, the clucking of coots and chortling of moorhens all around was interrupted by the repeated shrill ki-ki-ki-ki of a northern flicker, a bird I didn’t see that often when I did censuses here. I even managed a few noisy, low-light photographs. A good start.

Are you freaking serious? That’s the best look you’re going to give me?

I briefly pulled into the large parking area at the exit of the wildlife drive, just a bit further south on Emeralda Island Road. A male northern cardinal was flying across the lot into the open hammock on the north, but was accompanied by a female that didn’t seem the right color for a cardinal. She landed on an open perch at the edge of the woods, and I was able to get bins on her for a moment before she disappeared into the brush. A female blue grosbeak. She uttered a few of her distinctive metallic pit calls from the thicket, clearly assuming I needed all the help I could get to make the identification.

Blue grosbeak

On to the wildlife drive proper. This 4+ mile loop transects a variety of habitats, including some lovely hammocks and successional patches, but mostly it passes through the impounded wetlands that make up the majority of this 7000+ acre piece of property.

Here I found all the ghosts I could ever want to encounter, but they were all friendly ghosts. Nearly every spot along the entire drive brings back a specific recollection or two of some memorable wildlife or natural history sighting. I could write a book. Wait, I did write a book. Nobody would publish it.

Common yellowthroats were beginning to sing a bit.

Who knows what I’ll remember about today’s trips and sightings a few years from now? Mostly I saw pretty run-of-the-mill stuff; lots of yellow-rumped and palm warblers, many foraging low in the vegetation, some beginning to show signs of breeding plumage; several blue-headed vireos and orange-crowned warblers, which I always get a thrill out of seeing, though neither is a particularly uncommon bird; FOS northern parulas, and several singing common yellowthroats; and so on. Nothing there to sustain a twitcher. But it’s all good.

FOS northern parula

Probably the highlight birds of the day for me were the swamp sparrows – they were everywhere. And in contrast to their typical skulky behavior, several birds gave me good, only partially obscured views. One bird even showed me a behavior I’d never seen in swamp sparrows (or any sparrow, actually) before – he was eating the just emerged buds and tiny leaflets of a willow tree. More and more in the last several years I’ve heard accounts of animals that clearly eat specific plant materials to self-medicate – maybe that’s the function of this bird’s behavior. Though sparrows are largely herbivorous during the non-breeding season, I’ve always thought of them more as primarily seedeaters, not folivores. Relatively few bird species are pure leaf-eaters; it’s just not a very nutrient-dense source of provender. Especially at the bud stage, it seems like the nutrient or energy value of these tiny leaves would be negligible. But maybe there’s something else in them of value to the sparrow. Willow extract has been used for thousands of years to treat fever, headache and inflammation. It’s the original source of salicylic acid, from which aspirin is derived.

Swamp sparrow eating willow buds.

Savannah sparrows are always abundant along the roadsides until they migrate north

Savannah sparrows are always abundant along the roadsides of the wildlife drive, until they migrate north

This limpkin was the best wading bird of the morning.

Emeralda Marsh Conservation Area is located about 5 miles west of Eustis, north of the small town of Lisbon. More information about birding Emeralda can be found at the 1960’s-vintage website here.

The Ultimate Ocala Loop

January 26, 2014

I’m always on the lookout for new birding loops. I do a lot of my birding by road-cruising. All other things being equal, I prefer to get out of the car and into the habitat. Unfortunately Florida habitats, like those in every other part of the world where I’ve birded, are not particularly welcoming to my people. So from a purely practical consideration, I can cover vastly more area and see more stuff by car than by my limited means of self-propulsion. Natural areas with extensive hard-packed trails are always a treat, but I’ve found that the more accessible a natural area is, the more heavily visited it is. Profound. I prefer my natural history outings to be populated mainly or entirely by folks I choose to be with. Which is often no one. Some might call me a misanthrope. I hate those people.

When birding by car, the ideal trip for me is a big circuit that satisfies several requirements: a) it involves little or no time driving on heavily traveled roads that are impractical for slowing, stopping or wildlife observation or photography, b) it includes as wide a variety of interesting habitats as possible, c) the good light for photography is on the driver’s side as much as possible, and d) it is centered on DeLand and can be completed in a half-day or so. Finding new loops that meet these criteria is always a big rush.

So armed with a sense of adventure and optimism, I tried a new loop yesterday, and I’m pleased to report that it is the ultimate driving loop for birding Ocala National Forest. That’s a pretty presumptuous claim given the hundreds of miles of drivable roads in Ocala, so I should probably qualify it by saying merely that it is the ultimate Ocala driving loop that I’ve experienced to date. Anyway, I was recently accused of being “full of crap” by one of the most accomplished blowhards and bullshitters I’ve ever known; if you buy the premise that nobody can spot a bullshitter like another bullshitter, then my credibility is pretty low to begin with. Making one more extravagant and insupportable claim probably won’t adversely affect whatever shred of credence I might have.

Paisley sunrise looking south towards Lake Akron

Paisley sunrise looking southeast towards Lake Akron

I left home about a half-hour before sunrise Saturday morning and drove west on 44 across the St. Johns River, heading for the southern edge of the forest, whose boundary is formed by State Road 42. I was hoping to hit Paisley just as the sun was rising; a big successional field slopes downwards towards Lake Akron just before you enter Paisley. When conditions are right, a big fog bank sometimes forms over the lake and creeps up slope across the field, producing at times a spectacular foreground for the rising sun. The clouds were pretty dense and gloomy on this day, though, and the sunrise was humdrum. Somber gray skies prevailed until mid-morning. From Paisley, I continued southwest on 42 through Altoona, arriving at Sunnyhill Restoration Area by about 7:45. There is a small tract of live oak hammock there that is lovely in its own right, drenched with epiphytes like Spanish moss and resurrection fern, but there were no birds active on this chilly gray morning. The pastures near the horse trailer parking lot produced a flock of killdeers calling and wheeling, and a barred owl called from a distant hammock, but mostly it seemed as if the birds were still waiting to begin their day.

Sunnyhill Restoration Area

I backtracked on 42 to SW 182^nd Avenue Road (Avenue Road ? Isn’t that a bit of overkill?) and headed north a few miles to FR14, and then north on FR 05 (labeled SE 205^th Ave and Nfr 579 on Google Earth). I first visited Forest Road 05 a few months back and was struck by the incredible diversity of habitats it traverses.

The predominant habitat along FR 05 is scrub, but that simple statement doesn’t begin to hint at the wide range of structural and floristic variants that scrub encompasses. From where I started at its intersection with FR14 on the south to its terminus where it intersects FR50 (Hopkin’s Prairie Rd) some fifteen miles north, FR 05 traverses pretty much every stage of the scrub successional cycle, from recently burned tracts containing nothing but charred trunks and a few scattered survivors to mature monoculture stands of old sand pine, ready to be burned or harvested. And everything in between. Throw in non-scrub habitats, such as the frequent ponds, wetlands and depressions that support different plant communities and the result is that while cruising FR05, you are rarely in the same habitat type for more than a mile or so. If that.

Words are inevitably inadequate to describe the charm of these scrub habitats. Perhaps images are more revealing.

Mixed scrub

A grassy piney depression that clear on what this habitat would be classified as.

A grassy piney depression amid the scrub. I’m not sure what this habitat would be classified as.

Gorgeous Grassy Prairie

An open savannah-like tract in the midst of the scrub

The desolation of recently burned scrub.

A couple of northern flickers were hanging around and doing the wicka-wicka pair-bonding display in one of the few remaining sand pines.

Regenerating early regeneration scrub, with mature sand pine scrub in the distance

Regenerating early stage oaky scrub, with mature sand pine scrub in the distance

For the first hour and a half on FR05, bird activity was still quite low. Cold, cloudy conditions often stimulate birds of forested habitats to stick close to dense cover; trying to find birds at the edges created by the forest roads can be pretty non-productive. Several big flocks (~100) of American robins flew over, but I only saw a few in the scrub. A couple of flocks of blue jays and an occasional house wren or cardinal pair were about all I could kick up at first. By 10, the cloud cover began to disperse, the sun blazed through, and the birds began to appear. The various forms of scrub can host big numbers of wintering passerines, including half a dozen or more species of warblers. In fairly short order, I was able to tick off pines, palms (a couple of westerns but mostly easterns), yellow-rumps, yellow-throateds, black-and-white, common yellowthroat, a distant ovenbird chewking repeatedly, and several orange-crowned warblers. Eight species of warblers within an hour or two in mid-winter? How are you going to beat that?

Yellow-throated warbler

Palm warbler, eastern race

Pine warbler, male

Pine warbler, 1st year

Black-and-white warbler

Blue-headed vireo

Orange-crowned warbler. I found these birds several times in different mixed species flocks.

As FR05 approaches it’s intersection with State Road 40, the main east-west artery through the forest, one can, if one likes, take a 3/4 mile jog to the southwest to the boat ramp on Half Moon Lake. Expert Florida naturalist and biologist Dr. Steve Christman tells me that he sees bears in this area all the time, but I saw none on this day. Lots of bear scat, though, along with that of other carnivores. In some areas of the forest, it seems there is a pile of scat in the road from bear, bobcat, coyote, raccoon, or some other mid- to large-sized mammal nearly every 50m or less. Which does hint at the answer to the age-old riddle – does a wild bear shit in the woods? Not all the time, apparently.

Cladonia lichens in a fringing hammock around Half Moon Lake

Taking the dead-end spur to Half Moon Lake will spoil the loopular purity of this route, though, so it shouldn’t be indulged in cavalierly.

Across State Road 40, FR05 continues north for another several miles, in the process dipping down to the elevation of and skirting the edge of lovely Zay Prairie. Just one of many grassland/seasonal wetlands that FR05 passes, but certainly the most fully visible from the road.

Zay Prairie

Just before FR05 ends where it intersects FR50, there is a network of trails in the Lake Eaton Sink area. A small parking lot marks the trailhead; it was here that I digitally photographed my first Florida scrub lizard (Sceloporus woodi) several months ago. No scelops out on this chilly day, but I noticed something else there for the first time. Signs with some of my photographs on them! Tres cool.

Red-shouldered hawk, prickly pear and common yellowthroat by the artist once known as Destructo

Red-shouldered hawk, prickly pear and common yellowthroat by the artist formerly known as Destructo

The turn to the east of the ultimate Ocala loop comes at FR50; I turned right there yesterday, but a turn to the left will take the non-loop fixated visitor to some lovely hammocks and wetland habitats surrounding Lake Eaton. And Lake Eaton itself is charming.

Mixed scrub along FR50

Forest Road 50 eventually takes you by one of the most gorgeous areas of the forest I’ve yet seen, Hopkin’s Prairie. And that’s a viable option for modifying the ultimate Ocala loop if you choose to do so. But I didn’t. I turned south on FR33 west of Hopkin’s Prairie, stayed on that well-traveled road for scarcely more than a mile, then turned east on FR46, which skirts the northern edge of magnificent Juniper Prairie Wilderness. If I had to pick one road for birding out of all the roads I’ve been on in the forest, it would probably be this one. It runs only about 5 miles from its intersection with FR33 to where it ends at State Road 19 just south of Silver Glen Springs, but the range of both scrub and sandhill habitats found in this relatively short stretch usually produces a wide diversity of cool birds. Including lots of Florida scrub jays. Last winter during the red-breasted nuthatch invasion, I found these endearing little scuts on several occasions in the mature sand pine scrub tracts along FR46. The vast landscapes of low-stature oaky scrub visible to the south of this road are awe-inspiring.

Red-breasted nuthatch from FR46 in November, 2012.

Wintering eastern towhee. Our breeding towhees have white eyes. Towhees are abundant in the oaky scrub of Juniper Prairie

At State Road 19, the slow-rolling, intense birding part of the loop ends and gives way to the high-speed, vista-scanning form of birding. I usually take 19 back to 40 and then work my way back to Deland from there, still passing through the vast Ocala National Forest along much of the route. But that only works if you live in Deland. For those of you non-DeLandites, feel free to modify the ultimate Ocala loop once it reaches SR19 as necessary to return to your place of origin or nearest convenient parallel dimension.

A snipe hunt in Ocala National Forest

9 Replies

Title credit: E. Eugene Spears

January 12, 2014

Regenerating sandhills on FR11.

My buddies for life (I think) Skeate and Spears made their annual trek from the hellish cold of Banner Elk, North Carolina to pay me a visit this week. The three of us met as grad students in the fabled zoology department at UF back in the 80s, and they have been my closest friends since. All of us were Florida newbies, and we learned about community ecology and the terrestrial ecosystems of peninsular Florida from the same mentors at around the same time. Nonetheless, it was a major rush for me to spend a couple of days sharing my recently ignited passion for Ocala National Forest and its diversity of plant communities and landscapes with them by visiting a couple of my favorite spots in the forest. We had all taken Community Ecology at UF with field trips led by the great man, Dr. Archie Carr, whose knowledge and understanding of Florida natural history and ecology were nothing short of miraculous. So by comparison, my puny attempts to enlighten them somewhat about the scrub, high pine, and associated habitats were kind of laughable. But all we can do is take what we’re given, G. We had no particular target taxa in mind; we were just road-cruising, happy as scallops for whatever natural history nuggets we might chance upon.

In fact, this post might be better called the anti-snipe hunt, as it is antithetical in nearly every respect to the traditional snipe hunt. In a regular snipe hunt, a naïve nimrod is stationed somewhere in purportedly suitable habitat, preferably on a dark, moonless night, to wait for the mythical snipe to appear and bag it. It’s a very focused pursuit, but typically produces no useful outcome other than amusement for the instigators. By contrast, we were three unfocused but somewhat knowledgeable fellows, looking for nothing in particular, nearly constantly in motion, covering a lot of territory on a bright morning. And our efforts produced several useful outcomes, including crippling views of the legendary snipe. No capture other than digital, though.

Coachwhip

On Friday, we first visited a tract of private property a bit south of Astor Park that included the remains of some old sand-mining operation, and then we headed southwest towards the Alexander Spring section of the forest. As we tooled southeast on FR18 towards the 52 Landing boat ramp on Alexander Springs Creek, we saw (incredibly briefly) a 3-4’ snake speed across the road and into the cover along the margin. Perhaps as quickly as I’ve ever seen a snake cross a 20’ wide roadbed. I didn’t even get a look at the head before it disappeared out of sight, but the sand-colored caudal half of the body and rapid rate of transit was enough to identify it: coachwhip. As we savored the buzz of the sighting, we reminisced about the coachwhip we saw while on a Community Ecology field trip to the Ordway Preserve over 30 years ago. Most of the dozen or so grad students in the class, and a couple of faculty, were in the departmental van ahead of me. As I still am, I was a driving fool and so was following the van in my tortured old ’75 Ford Futura. I had to slam on the brakes and skid to a sudden stop in the sugar sand ruts as the van ahead of me did the same; the side door opened and about a half-dozen people exploded out of it in pursuit of the coachwhip that had crossed the two-track we were driving on through the successional pasture. Most of these herpetophiles were young men in their physical prime, but the great Dr. Carr, then somewhere in the neighborhood of 71 years old, beat them all to the beast and with a great flying leap pinned the coachwhip with his torso.

Coachwhip

The nasty masty turned around, clamped down on Dr. Carr’s nose, and held on. And Dr. Carr stayed chill, knowing that any movement might cause the snake to rake his not-insubstantial rows of sharp teeth through his rostral flesh. After a few seconds, the coachwhip, still mostly immobilized by Dr. Carr’s weight pressing on him, let go of his nose and looked around. One of the other members of the group immediately grabbed the snake a bit too far down the neck and pulled it from underneath Dr. Carr. The coachwhip promptly latched onto his hand and raked, causing him to begin gushing blood from numerous small lacerations. After they released the snake and it began its retreat from the band of stinking primates, I took two photographs of it as it periscoped and scanned its surroundings before boogying at top speed. When I received and viewed the processed slides, I saw that a small turkey oak seedling beside the snake was speckled with blood.

Skeate, Spears and Buckeye at Alexander Spring Creek.

Buckeye. This charming little canine played no significant role in any of the adventures related here, but he’s so damned handsome I had to include his portrait.

We had no comparable adventure with the Ocala coachwhip yesterday; it was gone before the three of us had even processed our sensory input and identified the snake as a coachwhip. Conclusion from this and countless other anecdotal evidence: Dr. Archie Fairly Carr Jr. was a great, great man.

Dr. Archie Carr, Jr. The most amazing man I've ever known personally.

Dr. Archie Carr, Jr. The most amazing man I’ve ever met.

The rest of Friday’s trip, which included Paisley Road and FR06, was lovely but unproductive of anything other than stunningly beautiful habitats. Our sampling of gorgeous and diverse habitats resumed on Saturday, when we took FR11 north from SR40, a bit west of Astor Park, and followed it to its end at Ocklawaha Lake, on the boundary of Ocala National Forest. Unlike most forest roads, the stretch of FR11 between SR40 and its intersection with SR 316 just northwest of Lake Kerr is paved. This section of FR11 passes mostly through scrub, though the range of scrub subtypes spans nearly the entire gamut, from recently harvested clearcuts to mature, even-aged stands of nearly pure sand pine, and all the intermediate successional stages connecting these two endpoints.

The first of the two black bears we saw on FR11.

Once north of 316, as FR 11 approaches the Riverside Island tract, the road reverts to the more typical yellow sand. It was here that within a stretch of no more than a mile or two we spotted two different black bears poking around the road margins. We stopped and glassed both animals for a minute or two from a distance of a couple hundred yards, and they glanced up the road at us but remained unconcerned until I tried to drive closer to them, at which point they both slowly retreated back into the sand pine scrub. It seems like there must be some meaning to the observation that in the 35 years I’ve lived in Florida, I’ve seen black bears in natural habitats (I’m not including the young bear I saw at 2 a.m. in the morning from about 5’ away destroying the bird feeder and pole just outside the window of my DeBary home, nor the one that wandered onto the Stetson campus one fall a few years back, climbed up into a smallish oak tree in front of the student union, and snoozed there for several hours as students and staff treated it like a rock star and gathered around to ooh and aah) maybe 11 times, and that eight of those sightings have been in the last 6 months. But more likely it is just a reflection of the random and unpredictable nature of actually seeing uncommon and wary wildlife.

Regenerating sandhills

Further north on FR11 the habitat transitions from scrub into regenerating sandhills, and then a bit further on, mature tracts of longleaf savannah where I had several killer encounters with roving clans of red-cockaded woodpeckers last year. The bright cloudy skies on this breezy morning provided the perfect diffuse lighting to accentuate the panoply of brown hues produced by the numerous conspicuous grasses. Luscious golden browns of Andropogon, creamy tans of wiregrass, a diverse range of intermediate tones from other grasses and senescent forbs – it’s a beautiful time of year to be in the sandhills.

Mature sandhills with wiregrass

At Rodman Dam, I was hoping for a variety of dabbling and diving ducks, but the only aquatic swimmers to be found were big flocks of American coots. While watching a couple of killdeer exploring the broad grassy berm of the dam, I saw a lone Wilson’s snipe toddling slowly up the slope. Confident that it would flush with a buzzy prrrrrt as soon as I got anywhere close to it, I idled towards it hoping to grab a shot or two. And behaving exactly like a consummately cryptic bird should, it surprised me by never flushing, ultimately allowing me to drive within about 15 feet and fire away to my heart’s content. It was still hunkered in the same spot as I slowly pulled away.

Wilson’s snipe.

The friends I made in graduate school were some of the finest people I’ve ever been privileged to know, and those relationships seem to sweeten and intensify with time like a fine wine. Can’t go back to those halcyon, treasured times, I know, but spending time with old friends like Skeate and Spears is maybe the next best thing.

Coco and her dude.

The post-script to this story concerns stuff we didn’t see. Before their visit, I was totally jazzed by the prospect of showing off the pair of painted buntings that had been visiting my gardens for the previous couple of weeks. But both those birds disappeared about a week before my friends arrived, and despite my repeated entreaties to the bird gods, the male never returned while they were here. Coco, the female, did put in brief appearances on Friday and Saturday afternoon, but the incomparably beautiful male waited until 3 hours or so after they pulled out this morning to make his return. The serendipity of natural history. Next year, my friends.

Gray day, brown birds

November 15, 2013

Mesic flatwoods with a recently cleared swath full of senescent redroot (Lachnanthes caroliana)

There was a sliver of open sky hinting at a glorious sunrise on the horizon when I left home, but by the time I got to Tiger Bay, no more than fifteen minutes later, it was a memory. Leaden skies, with no hint of optimism about them. Skies like these could have come straight from the prose of The Road, Cormac McCarthy’s minor masterpiece. Well hell, they’re all masterpieces, aren’t they, minor or major. Who am I to label? A compelling novel whose main character is a depraved necrophiliac engaging in Davian behavior, including the cave – are you kidding me? Child of God indeed, coming soon to a theater near you.

So as I drove up the charming brick road leading into the north entrance of Tiger Bay State Forest, I was a bit bummed. My mellow had been slightly harshed. No glorious early morning light to be had this morning. I was questioning whether it would brighten enough for any photography at all. Melanins were to be the theme of the day. Melanins are the class of pigments that give vertebrates their neutral tones; in the feathers of birds, they span the range from blacks and grays to rusty browns and everything in between. The skies were seemingly tinged with melanins this morning, and as it turned out, the great majority of birds I saw followed the sky’s lead.

The gray, cool conditions suppressed most insect activity. Even these little bumblebees were moving incredibly slowly as they nectared on these asters.

The gray, cool conditions suppressed most insect activity. Even these little bumblebees were moving incredibly slowly as they nectared on the asters.

At the intersection of Gopher Ridge Road and Dark Entry Road (oooh, spooky!), in the southeast quadrant, there is a stand of maybe a couple hundred acres that was modified several years ago by the foresters at Tiger Bay. This area, formerly dense young wet flatwoods, had been most notable to me for years because of the large numbers of hooded pitcherplants, Sarracenia minor, that flowered each spring along the roadside ditches and depressions. It was never particularly remarkable to me for birds until the land managers severely thinned the pines and cleared most of the thick undergrowth. Now, several years later this stand has the feel of a pine savannah, and is often loaded with great birds, including red-headed woodpeckers, eastern bluebirds, Bachman’s sparrows, northern flickers, and so on. It’s a wonderful demonstration of the power of effective habitat management. But this morning it was as empty as McCarthy’s road. I heard a sedge wren chitting from a dense clump of broomsedge and forbs, but the light was so dismal I didn’t even think about photography.

Dark Entry Road

Further east on Dark Entry, past the savannah, the young flatwoods become denser. But the foresters have been at work in that section recently as well, thinning and opening up the understory in patches. At one of these patches, a few acres of cleared land now supporting a successional field, I found a large stand of Sesbaenia vesicaria, a weedy legume that can get 6-8’ tall in good conditions. It’s not too dense a thicket for seeing birds, but provides enough cover that even skulky birds feel secure there. A bit of chattering told me a house wren was in the thicket, so I began a bit of low-level pishing and playback, using just a chickadee scold call. Response was slow to develop, but within a couple of minutes I saw a couple of birds moving around the back of the thicket, tending in my direction. One seemed a bit dark for a house wren, but I didn’t pay it much attention at first. Everything seemed dark this morning. Eventually it moved to an only semi-obscured perch and I was able to get bins on it.

Lincoln’s sparrow.

Shock. And delight. It wasn’t a wren. It was a Lincoln’s sparrow. This is a bird I see on very rare occasions. I had never seen one before I came to Florida, though they pass sparingly through northern Virginia, where I began birding. I had lived and birded in Florida for over 20 years before I saw my first one here. It wasn’t until I began doing weekly bird surveys at Emeralda Marsh Conservation Area back in 2000 that I saw my first. Lincoln’s sparrows were regular, but rare, migrants and winter residents in the wet thickets of Emeralda; I saw them on perhaps 10 occasions there during the 7 years I did censuses. I had only seen one outside of Emeralda, and that was also at Tiger Bay, in a thicket by the canal that parallels the South Entrance road that takes you to Rattlesnake Pond. Thickets and nearby water seem to be a common theme to all of those sightings. Similarly, this morning’s LISP was in the Sesbaenia thicket, which was less than 20 yards away from several small depression ponds.

Lincoln’s sparrow

What an elegant little sparrow. But what a recluse. That was my experience at Emeralda as well; rarely did I get unobstructed views or photo ops with Lincoln’s. After thoroughly intoxicating myself with lovely binocular views of this dapper dude, my thoughts turned to shooting it, if only for documentary purposes. Didn’t seem likely, as he was still way too distant for decent shots, and completely or partially blocked by vegetation about 90% of the time. Eventually he did give me a couple of distant and brief photo ops, and in the last, he was completely exposed on an open perch surrounded by maidencane. Not the frame-filling fantasy shots I had visualized (yeah, like those visualized fantasy shots ever happen), but good enough, with massive cropping and consequent low image quality, for decent record shots. I was as happy as a little girl. The gray morning was now glowing.

Seeing sparrows well, and in particular the less common sparrows, has that effect on me. Sparrows are tough. Seeing many of the wintering Florida sparrows clearly or regularly often involves slogging through dense cover to flush them out. My people don’t do slogging through dense cover well. Seeing the rarer sparrows is both difficult and exhilarating for me. One of the high points among my Florida birding experiences was the cold, dank, drizzly January morning that birding legend John Puschock took me to a weedy field near Bull Hammock at Emeralda Marsh Conservation Area and flushed both LeConte’s and Henslow’s sparrows, affording me killer views of both species. Two lifer sparrows within minutes of each other. Awesome.

The LeConte’s sparrow John Puschock found for me. Scanned from a badly underexposed slide.

So this morning’s Lincoln’s sparrow didn’t quite reach that level of excellence, but it was pretty damned fine. It’s kind of a funny feeling seeing what you know will be the best bird of the day the very first thing. Kind of a release – no matter what I was to see or not see the rest of the morning, I already had that peak experience under my belt for the day. And in fact I didn’t see anything else as buzzworthy as the Lincoln’s sparrow, but I saw lots of other cool birds. Even without the Lincoln’s sparrow, it would have been a totally fulfilling communion, which I should know by now. It’s always worthwhile going out to look at the real world.

House wren

Melanin-dominated birds were the order of the day. Leaving the Dark Entry pine savannah, I found the sedge wren I had heard earlier, along with a buddy. Light still sucked, but they teased me for quite a few minutes with brief glimpses and ephemeral open perching. As it turned out, sedge wrens were widespread in Tiger Bay this morning. I saw or heard them at nearly every stop with appropriate habitat. Along with their even drabber, browner cousins the house wrens.

Sedge wren

A bit later, in one of the large clearcut tracts of drier flatwoods on the east portion of Bear Swamp Road, I found more LBJs. I had taken my Ornithology class to this section of Tiger Bay earlier in the week, and we had found both chipping sparrows and a coquettish song sparrow in the dense successional tangle of the clearcut. The song sparrow taunted us at great length, moving all around the group while chimping constantly, but giving only the most fragmentary of views. He was still in the same area this morning, still chimping, and still staying mostly hidden. A couple of congeners, however, were a bit more obliging. Two swamp sparrows ventured quite close to me, though they never fully came out into the open. I think swamp sparrows are the most understatedly handsome of our common winter sparrows, but getting clean BOAS-style portrait shots of them is no easy feat. If that’s what you’re in to.

Swamp sparrow

By now, it was nearing 10 a.m., and the sky was starting to spit. Work beckoned. Which might give the erroneous impression that I actually work for a living. Gray and now damp with declining prospects for the near future. But what did I care? The little brown birds had given me all that I could have hoped for and more.

The most colorful bird I photographed this morning. Nonetheless this male common yellowthroat chose a lovely brown background for his portrait.

Remembering old friends

6 Replies

Saltbush (Baccharis halimifolia) blooming in the mesic flatwoods of Lake George Conservation Area

November 10, 2013

True fall tends to make me ruminisce (a hybrid mental process involving both reminiscence and rumination), often tending towards the melancholy. True fall is for me defined by two things: the point in time when I begin to perceive a significant change in temperature, cross-factored with a decided shift in the bird fauna from the transient migrants towards winter residents. The indicator event of the latter is for me is the ascendance of the yellow-rumped warblers¸ the fourth wave of migrant warblers, to numerical dominance. I encountered both those indicators this morning when I cruised Lake George Conservation Area, just west of Seville. So it’s not surprising that a lot of stuff I experienced today brought back memories. Most good, some bittersweet.

After a spectacular mackerel sunrise that I was unable to capture on sensor because I failed to follow Skeate’s 6 P’s (prior planning prevents piss-poor performance), I reached the entrance to LGCA at Truck Trail 2 a bit after sunrise. The spectacular sunrise soon turned to a mostly overcast, dully-colored kind of early morning. Bird activity was notably lacking at first light. At my first stop, unproductive for birds, I found a jaundiced-looking lynx spider in a fruiting branch of beautyberry that seemed photoworthy. As happens nearly every time I do anything related to spiders, I thought of my graduate school friend Craig Hieber, who taught me a significant proportion of what I know about Florida spiders.

Green lynx spider (Peucetia viridans) on American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)

Craig was a great blond bear of a man, with a huge appetite for life and a big, big heart. He was also a spider fanatic. We spent many enjoyable hours in the field cross-pollinating each other with inane trivia from our own area of expertise. I’ll never forget the time Craig hummed to a Neoscona in its web, and by hitting some particular frequency to which that species is attuned, caused the spider to snap immediately into an alert, forelimbs-raised hunting posture. A revelation for me about spider behavior. Craig died unexpectedly several years ago, far too young. I remember feeling like I’d been stabbed in the heart when I first learned of his death. But I remember him and the cool stuff he taught me all the time. I think it was Alice Sebold who wrote in The Lovely Bones something to the effect that when you have a memory of someone who has died it means that person’s spirit or essence is near you. If that’s true, Craig spends a lot of time hanging out around me.

Craig Hieber and a nesting soft-shelled turtle we found on one of our outings.

Neoscona crucifera, the spider Craig sang to.

The other old friends that I remembered this morning didn’t bring such a mixed bag of feelings. They were mostly the winter resident birds that have recently begun to dominate the avifauna. I love seeing transient migrants simply because of their evanescence. My encounters with the transients are too brief to feel like I really grok them though. With the winter birds, it’s different. They are around for a good four to five months. I get to see them and interact with them over and over again during their winter stay. And for some of the more common ones, I get more of a visceral feel for what they are and what they do. Whatever the hell that means.

Ruby-crowned kinglet, one of the winter residents that defines the onset of true fall.

Yellow-rumped warblers were the most abundant passerines of the morning. One flock contained several dozen birds. They just continued to drop out of the skies. As is typical of my experience with the butterbutts, they are dedicated mobbers, but relatively shy and skittish compared to most other mobbing warblers. In the large flock, not a one came down from the treetops. When the occasional bird does approach more closely, the slightest movement is all it takes to send the lot of them scattering for cover. Still, it’s just very cool to see flocks containing that many passerines again. One of the things I really like about the winter bird fauna.

Every afternoon from about this time of fall until spring migration, the yellow-rumps move through my yard about an hour or so before sunset. Flocks of anywhere from a half-dozen to 30 or more will appear from nowhere and glean the oaks and cherries in my yard. They usually stay a half-hour or so, then move on. Regular as clockwork. Where are they coming from, and where are they heading to roost? They clearly have a schedule to keep.

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers are another winter friend I love seeing again each fall. I had seen a few sapsuckers in the previous couple of weeks with the Ornithology class, but hadn’t got a chance to watch one at length before this morning. I don’t think I can say I really grok sapsuckers yet, but I’m getting closer. Such a recluse, for a woodpecker. Maybe that’s one of reasons I like them so much – the whole birds of a feather thing. All of our other woodpeckers are pretty good at making a dramatic entrance when they want to – a big power glide and swoop onto an open trunk is pretty hard to miss. Sapsuckers may be able to do that, but they don’t seem to want to very often. They just kind of slip in quietly most of the time, and all of a sudden they are there. And disappear just as quickly. Their presence is better judged by their works. In some habitats, sapsucker drill holes are everywhere.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker at Lake George Conservation Area.

Can plants be friends? Hell yes they can. As the great Zappa once wrote, “Call any vegetable, call it by name. Call one today, when you get off the train. Call any vegetable, and the chances are good That the vegetable will respond to you”. So I was thrilled to see big lavender swaths of my old friend Garberia in the flatwoods this morning. I think of Garberia as a scrub plant, but there they were in the flatwoods looking happy as clams. Not only is Garberia a lovely plant as judged by the standards of the pure botanist, it is notable for other less obvious reasons. It’s a very non-composite-like composite to me, which is especially welcome at this time of year when composites of all kinds are going nuts. Garberia seems to me to be a composite that would really rather be an ericad. So it has that going for it, which is nice.

Syrphid fly partaking of the pleasures of the botanical hussy Garberia heterophylla

But it’s also something of a whore for pollinators. Anybody will do, it seems. I have, of course, fallen victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia”, but only slightly less well known is never make the assumption that all insects visiting a flower are pollinators. Still, given the relatively open flower morphology and the long easily accessible stamens and style, it doesn’t seem like total heresy to suggest that most of the flies, bees, wasps, skippers and other butterflies swarming over these lush Garberia flowers might effect pollination to some degree.

Buckeye at Garberia. Lake George Conservation Area

Skipper at Garberia. This was one of the happier skippers I saw visiting the flowers.

The highlight of the activity at the Garberia patch was provided by another old friend, a Carolina anole. This one was creeping around the foliage below the big flower heads, his pie-hole crammed with a skipper he had recently snagged from above. The stink eye he was giving me as he tried to figure out what to do with his mouthful of chitin suggested that his thoughts towards me weren’t as fraternal as mine towards him. At least at that moment.

Green anole (Anolis carolinensis) scarfing one of the less happy skippers I saw at Garberia.

Reconnoitering the rim

September 14, 2013

Taking photographs is one of my main reasons for going into the field. The most important reason is, of course, to see fascinating flora and fauna, and perhaps learn a bit about how they make their way through the world. But capturing images of at least some of the plants and animals runs a close second. Those images are almost entirely for my own purposes; only a very small fraction are ever seen by anyone other than me. So maybe it’s not a big deal that the most stunning image I’ve experienced in some time is one that I will never be able to share. Driving north on SR19 through Ocala National Forest on Saturday morning, about 15 minutes before sunrise and a mile or so north of Silver Glen Springs, I saw an animal crossing the road a couple hundred yards ahead of me. No other traffic in sight. The telltale trot told me immediately it was a coyote. I don’t see coyotes often, and truth be told, I don’t get that excited about mammals in general. Stinky nocturnals, for the most part. But I adore dogs of every size, shape and temperament. Seeing a wild dog is for me a pinnacle experience.

It was during that transitional period between dawn and the full light of sunrise, when colors are beginning to become apparent, but still somewhat muted. I was on the coyote in no time, and she maintained her steady lope across the road and onto the shoulder, about a fifteen foot wide swath of mowed grass, ending where the dense ground cover and low vegetation of oaky scrub began. As I passed her, now slowed down to maybe 30-40 mph, she stopped at the edge of the shoulder, turned broadside to me, and watched me as I drove past. I locked eyes with her. Then she turned and was gone. I don’t know exactly what happened to my neurochemistry at that moment, but I’m pretty sure it involved a massive flood of several happy neurotransmitters. Dopamine, adrenaline, oxytocin – who knows? As I drove away from that brief but intense moment, I felt changed, and elated in a way I don’t often experience. Privileged. That image, that moment of looking into the eyes of “God’s dog”, will be forever burned in my brain. I couldn’t help but wonder later what was going on in the coyote’s agile mind. For me, it was a feeling of intense awe and admiration. For her, I can only guess. Curiosity, for sure, probably a bit of fear, and if coyotes have anything like a collective unconscious or shared genetic memory, perhaps a big dose of disgust and mistrust over the way humans have for centuries abused and tortured these beautiful little canids. Hard to imagine a better start to the morning, even if I have no photograph to document the moment.

Ocklawaha Lake from the Kirkpatrick Dam

Ocklawaha Lake, aka Rodman Reservoir, was my first destination, and from there I planned to explore some new roads along the northeast rim of the forest. Several weeks ago I discovered serendipitously that one of my favorite roads through the forest, FR11, continues over the Kirkpatrick dam that forms Ocklawaha Lake. The dam was built as part of the abandoned effort to build the Cross-Florida Barge Canal across the peninsula in the ‘60s, and it remains controversial, pitting environmentalists who would like to see the dam removed to restore the Ocklawaha River to a free-flowing state against sportsmen who wish to protect the outdoor recreation opportunities it provides. I just wanted to see migrant birds. I was hoping that some of the floodplain forest in the area would be teeming with brightly-colored warblers and other neotropicals. A couple dozen or so herons and egrets (great blues, little blues, snowies, great egrets and a single green) and dozens of vultures, who seemed to regularly roost on the dam and along the road that crosses it, were the only birds I could turn up there.

Snowy egret and great blue heron. Ocklawaha Lake

Dubbed “Sand Land” by some creative soul on Panoramio, this scrub barren on FR 11 just south of Ocklawaha Lake is the result of off-road vehicle abuse of the scrub habitat. Even though vehicular use of this tract is no longer permitted, it remains in this degraded state.

Forest Road 74 crosses Forest Road 11 just south of Ocklawaha Lake. I drove west on FR74 into unexplored territory. A mobbing response by a small flock of passerines included several towhees in various states of moult and dishevelment, a couple of prairie warblers, and some residents like Carolina wrens and cardinals. A bit further down the road, a second mobbing flock was more diverse, and contained several northern parulas, a yellow-throated warbler or two, scrub and blue jays, and a distant Empidonax flycatcher I didn’t come close to photographing. I was pretty pleased with myself just to be able to ID it as an Empidonax; identifying it to species, without vocalization, is outside of my skill set.

Male eastern towhee, still looking sub-prime from his post-nuptial molt.

Female northern parula

Leaving that flock, I spotted a medium-sized snake stretched out in the bare sand of the scrub alongside the road. Black racer. Surprisingly, he let me drive to within 10’ or so without bolting. As I moved slowly to get the camera into position, I was holding my breath that I wouldn’t spook the racer before I got off at least a few shots in this delicate, diffuse morning light. Black racers are pretty easy to find, but not easy to photograph for me. These are intensely visual snakes, and I suspect in my entire experience with the species, I’ve only seen them a few times before they have seen me. A much more common experience is to spot one while glassing the habitat for whatever, only to realize the snake already has a visual lock on me. From distances up to 30-40’ away. These snakes don’t miss much. On the occasions when I’m fortunate enough to watch one hunting my backyard and gardens, I’m always struck by their awareness of their environment, periscoping frequently to elevate their head above the ground cover and assess their surroundings. Typically, any quick movement on my part precipitates a rapid retreat to cover by the snake. Which is exactly what this racer did the first time I tried to inch a bit closer for a better shot.

Black racer basking

Black racer

Black racer periscoping. From my yard, hence the noxious St. Augustine grass

FR 74 leaves the forest a couple of miles west of FR 11 and passes through private land; I took FR09 south to get back into the sparsely traveled roads of the national forest. Another fine mobbing flock in an ecotone between oaky scrub and sand pine scrub was the best of the morning – perhaps 15-20 birds, including scrub jays, towhees, prairie warblers and northern parulas, a white-eyed vireo, tufted titmice, cardinals, a woodpecker or two, Carolina wrens. The usual suspects. And ovenbirds. Once again this weekend, they were chewking from dense cover in nearly every mobbing flock I encountered.

Florida scrub jays

Prairie warbler

Immature female eastern towhee molting into her first adult (basic) plumage

Ovenbird

FR 09 in this area is notable for another reason – topography. Not much by most standards, but enough to allow extended views of the surrounding habitat mosaic. The presence of actual hills and draws in the forest is always a welcome surprise.

Topography (of sorts) on Forest Road 09

From FR 09, I took FR70 back to the east. Soon after passing into one of the large tracts of clearcut sand pine scrub, I saw a large, dark raptor flying low across the landscape and swoop up into the top of a lone sand pine that had been left standing. Profile and flight pattern didn’t look like the raptors I see most often, but as soon as it perched I could see the ear tufts. A great horned owl, hunting (?) in broad daylight, on a sunny morning, around 10:00 a.m. That’s something I don’t see often. Until earlier this year, I’ve always thought of great horned owls as a “bird of the day” species. Typically I see them only a few times a year. Since June, I’ve seen great horned owls at least 10 times in a half-dozen or more different locations. The serendipity of birding.

Great horned owl, hunting at mid-morning.

Great horned owl youngster, from earlier this year at Lake George Conservation Area

Some time around 1100, I made it back to familiar ground; FR 70 intersects FR11 just north of the Riverside Island tract where I have had such good luck finding red-cockaded woodpeckers this year. None today – it was far too late in the morning and too warm for much bird activity, though I did find a pair of American kestrels hunting in the same open sandhills tract where I have seen them before. Almost certainly a breeding pair; I haven’t seen any migrant kestrels yet this year at the spots where I usually find them.

Forest Road 70 where it passes through an isolated live oak hammock amidst the sandhills

While driving south on FR11 through majestic mature sandhills, I was watching some mixed roadside clumps of goldenrod and evening primrose for pollinator activity and noticed the reticulate wings of some rather large insect in the foliage of one of the primroses. It was one of the larger species of antlions (Myrmeleon sp?) that had been snagged by a nearly invisible green lynx spider (Peucetia viridens) only moments before. It was still oozing hemolymph from the spider’s puncture wounds, and it seemed to still have a glimmer of life in its many eyes. Green lynx spiders – what fierce predators those lovely arachnids are. There don’t seem to be any size limits or taxonomic boundaries on the prey these oxyopid spiders will tackle. Tough luck for the antlions and myriad other prey taxa.

Green lynx spider (Peucetia viridens) with antlion prey

From a coyote to a lynx – a good morning for the predators, and me. If I continue exploring new forest roads at my current pace, I should have thoroughly traversed the forest by the time I’m ready to retire. Ocala National Forest – the gift that keeps on giving.

Chewk!

3 Replies

September 8, 2013

That was the signature sound of the scrub while I was exploring a new area of Ocala National Forest this morning. Indicative of the vastness of Ocala, I spent over four hours driving/birding on one forest road. Forest Road 05 between the Big Scrub on the south and its intersection with Hopkins Prairie Road (FR50) on the north spans only about 15 miles as the crow flies, but it kept me occupied for the whole of the morning.

Communal roosting cluster of zebra longwings, Heliconius charithonia

My first stop of the morning was Sunnyhill Restoration Area, just north of CR42 and east of Starke’s Ferry. Not much happening there, though I did see a small cluster of roosting zebra longwing butterflies (Heliconius charithonia); I had heard of this communal roosting behavior of zebras before, but had never seen it. The three dew-covered compatriots were still a bit too chilled out to begin their daily activity.

I left Sunnyhill and headed north of CR42, back into Ocala National Forest. I’ve spent almost no time in the southeastern corner of the forest, so this was all new and exciting territory for me. I started east on FR14, but after about 10 minutes of driving straight into the sun, my keen sense of light told me this was no good. So I took a shot and headed north on FR05. Hell of a shot.

Forest Road 14

When birding/photographing from the car, N-S roads are my preference in the morning, as the driver’s side scenery is drenched in beautiful early morning light. Ideally, the road passes through a variety of interesting habitats, and is lightly travelled. FR05 was exemplary on both counts. In the course of the four hours spent there, I didn’t see another vehicle on the 12 or so miles south of State Road 40. Which meant that I could feel free to ignore normal road conventions and drive on the left side, which is closer to the habitat and critters in the direct morning light.

A several hundred acre tract of clearcut sand pines

Diversity of habitats? As everyone’s favorite twit might say, you betcha! The mainstay of Ocala National Forest is scrub and sandhills; FR05 is biased towards the former. Scrub in all its variants is interspersed like a mosaic along it’s length. Great orthogonal tracts of recently clearcut sand pine scrub, regenerating oak-dominated scrub in a variety of states of maturity, and uniform even-aged stands of sand pine scrub were all there, as well as nearly every intermediate between those habitats you can imagine. Some bits of sandhill as well, but none of the majestic mature tracts like those found in some other parts of the forest. Nestled in among these habitats are a rich diversity of open, wetland habitats – some ephemeral, some permanent. FR05 passes by several small to mid-sized lakes, and many shallower depressions that harbor grass-dominated prairie habitats. These little mini-grasslands surrounded by fringing tracts of hammock, scrub or sandhills sometimes take my breath away.

FR05 where it passes between mature sand pine scrub and clearcut scrub

The low structural diversity of mature sand pine scrub doesn’t support as great a diversity or density of birds as more recently disturbed sites.

It may not look all that appealing, but this scrubby oak stage of scrub regeneration can be absolutely teeming with passerine birds at some times of year.

But back to the birds. As has been my experience in the Hopkins and Juniper Prairie sections of Ocala, the greatest diversity of both resident and migrant passerines was in the oak-dominated, regeneration phase of scrub. The sand-pine dominated tracts were mostly devoid of activity, though towhees and white-eyed vireos were still singing there. In the oaky scrub, though, I found several excellent flocks that held migrant warblers. Not a great diversity, but excellent numbers. Prairie warblers turned up repeatedly, sometimes 4 or 5 birds at a time, but that wasn’t the species that gave me the warm fuzzies this morning.

Grassy prairie, one of the wetland depressions along FR05

Yellow-throated warbler

Prairie warbler in scrubby oak

Which brings me back to the subject – chewk! Learn that call, and you’ll get a true index of the abundance of ovenbirds during their peak of passage through the state. Ovenbirds were everywhere this morning, though I only saw about 5 or 6 individuals. I heard at least 20 more. Once one bird begins uttering this distinctive alarm call, any others in the area are likely to vocalize as well. I saw/heard no ovenbird singles this morning. There were always at least 2-3 birds chewking, sometimes more. But damn, those little dudes do not like to come out in the open. They have achieved maximum skulkitude. So while I got dozens of photos of prairie warblers, I got only a handful, at too great a distance, of the ovenbirds.

Ovenbird, author of the chewk call.

The prairies and ovenbirds were the dominant birds of the morning, but I also turned up yellow-throated and pine warblers, northern parulas, a summer tanager, and 3 or 4 yellow-throated vireos, a couple of which were still singing. That’s always a tough bird for me to find, either in the breeding season or migration. They kept their distance, though – no killer photo ops. It was a respectable contingent of migrants along with an abundance of the permanent residents (lots of Florida scrub jays) – FR05 goes on my To Visit Again list.

Eastern towhee, female. A resident breeder of the scrub.

Florida scrub jay family groups are fairly common along FR05.

Zay Prairie, a lovely temporary wetland on FR05. I can’t think of many places where you see sand pine and sabal palms in contiguous habitats.

Zay Prairie

The morning ended on an especially high note, once again due to a herp. As I drove south on the northern section of FR05, just south of its terminus at FR50, I saw a lizard in the entry road to the parking area for the Lake Eaton sinkholes trail. I was thrilled to find as I approached it that it was the Florida scrub lizard, Sceloporus woodi. This endemic species is restricted to scrub, and found only in Florida, in contrast to its more ubiquitous cousin, the eastern fence lizard, Sceloporus undulatus. Fence lizards still get me excited, but it had been years since I had seen a scrub lizard, and the first chance I had to get digital photos of one. And though this guy was basking in full sun in the middle of the road, he allowed me to approach within a few feet and fire off a couple hundred frames before he eventually headed for cover.

Sceloporus woodi, the Florida scrub lizard

No better way to end the morning than with a cooperative squamate.

Sceloporus woodi

How a snake made my day

4 Replies

August 31, 2013

The urge to take nature photographs is in some ways a curse. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders includes wildlife photography as a distinguishable variant of OCD. My frequent field/photo buddy John and I were talking about this just a couple of days ago. John’s camera body had become frozen in Err mode; no matter what he did to it, it continued to flash the generic error message and would do nothing else. He was a bit distraught about the prospect of going into the field to look for critters without a camera. I share his angst. I have trouble separating any aspect of natural history study from the compulsion to take pics of the object of my interest. I’m sure I would be a better birder if I occasionally ditched the camera and just looked at birds. In fact I do that when I teach Ornithology and lead field trips, but only because the mental dexterity required to look for birds, communicate effectively with the students, and try to take photos simultaneously usually exceeds my limited mental resources. I lead those field trips with a small amount of trepidation that some amazing photo op will present itself during the trip and I won’t capture it. Another downside of the photography bug manifests as a sense of incompleteness on those occasions when I do go into the field to natural historize and take photos, and no photo opportunities are to be had. Any time spent in the field is still incomparably rewarding, but for me it’s diminished somewhat if I don’t get at least a photo or two that I find satisfactory.

That was the state of affairs this morning, as I hit the road to try to find some fall migrants. Preferably warblers. Armed with my brand new DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteer, the plan was to hit some reliable spots and maybe explore some new ones. What a resource that volume is – my old copy, which I probably paid something around $15 for more than 20 years ago, was terminal. The covers were ripped and detached. Several of the individual maps for areas I visit often were also torn loose and stuck between the still-attached pages. Still, maybe the best $15 I’ve ever spent. I’ve used and abused the hell out of my old Gazetteer. So I finally sprung for the $25 to buy a new one. I’m not the most digitally connected guy on the planet (don’t own a smartphone), but I do make frequent use of Google Earth to plan trips into new areas. The wealth of information available from aerial imagery is truly stunning. Still, I like using good old-fashioned paper maps. There’s something very comforting to me about having a detailed map on the passenger seat when I’m visiting a site for the first time. Unanticipated benefit of the upgrade – many of the roads, and other aspects of the landscape such as boundaries of state and federal public lands, had changed since my old one was published. Who knew?

Worm-eating warbler

I hit a couple of my favorite patches close to home soon after sunrise; the entrance road to Lake Woodruff NWR, Chuck Lennon Park in DeLeon Springs, DeLeon Springs State Park, but not much was happening. There were a few decent birds (let’s be honest; there’s really no such thing as an indecent bird) around, but absolutely nothing happening photo wise. I saw my FOS worm-eating warbler at Woodruff, but never came close to getting a photo of that handsome little parulid. One of the not uncommon migrants that is on my photo want list. I have some mediocre, ID-level shots of these understatedly elegant little warblers, but am still waiting for that primo photo op in spectacular light. Not this morning, though. So even that sighting, of a warbler I don’t see very often, was somehow lessened in impact because I had no tangible evidence of having seen it. And I think for me that’s a big part of what photography represents – a hunter/collector approach to the natural world. When I see something that excites me in the field, I want a trophy to commemorate the occasion.

Chuck Lennon produced a handful of passerines, but all were common species, and most were residents. A red-eyed vireo or two, several northern parulas, blue-gray gnatcatchers, cardinals, Carolina wrens, and so on. A bunch of killdeer were on one of the baseball diamonds, but way too far away for photography, and therefore of limited appeal. Nothing of note at DeLeon Springs, though I spent only a few moments there. Too many people.

Next on the agenda was the Bluffton area of Lake George State Forest, a site I’ve visited only a few times in the last year or two. A few birds moving, but all the same stuff I’d seen earlier. It was around 9:30 or so by this point, and I was getting bummed. I hadn’t taken a photo yet, and the magic light of morning was done. On sunny mornings, for me the best light for wildlife photography starts about 30-45 minutes after sunrise (I’m not a fan of the overly warm “golden light” that sometimes occurs right after sunrise; white birds that appear yellow or even orange don’t appeal to me much), and lasts until no later than an hour and a half after sunrise. I’ll still take pics after that period, but the richness and accuracy of color and detail continue to degrade as the morning wears on. Never mind the fact that I was having a perfectly lovely morning in beautiful habitats, seeing some cool birds and neat flora, and just in general soaking up the outdoor experience; I was still dissatisfied at some fundamental level because I had no photos to show for my morning.

The only bird I photographed today, a prairie warbler

DeLorme on the seat beside me, I left Bluffton and headed for new territories. Riley Pridgeon Road travels north from SR40 through some parts of Lake George State Forest I’d never been to. Which is always cool, but the several miles of forest roads I drove were similar to other parts of the forest I’ve been to – a lot of fairly young pine plantation, which is structurally pretty simple and uniform, and consequently low in bird diversity. Patchiness and ecotones increase diversity. I picked up my first prairie warblers of the morning, and even got photo ops of one, but they were marginal at best. In the dappled light of a winged sumac shrub, I knew they would be cluttered and unevenly lit. Happy to get them, but also still dissatisfied with the morning as a whole.

Volusia Bar Road

By 10:30 I was thinking about calling it quits and heading home. I had taken Volusia Bar Road to its dead end near the shore of Lake George, and passed through some fantastic looking habitat, so I was kind of jazzed about the prospect of coming back when there were actually BIRDS present, but they weren’t happening just then. In particular, I found about a quarter-mile stretch of the road bordering a slough, surrounded by a dense 15-20 foot high stand of red maple, with direct morning light. It reminded me very much of a similar piece of habitat at Emeralda Marsh Conservation Area where I consistently saw good concentrations of warblers and other migrants when birds were moving. Definitely a spot to return to later in the season as the magnitude of migration increases. No evidence of that this morning thought.

Cottonmouth

So returning eastwards on Volusia Bar Road, I was ecstatic to see a big snake crossing the road ahead. My first looks were strongly backlit – all I could tell at first was that it was a heavy-bodied snake. I’ve been hoping to find an eastern diamondback crossing the road for the last several years, and for a second or two it seemed like this might be it. But the habitat was pure cottonmouth, and as I got a bit closer it became clear that’s what it was. No matter. Big, beautiful, healthy-looking snake, completely exposed, in no hurry to get across the road – photo ops. Here’s what I’d been looking for all morning.

Cottonmouths can be common as dirt in the flatwoods and their associated roadside ditches, depressions, and swales that hold standing water at times, so it wasn’t like it was some amazing rarity I’d turned up. After pigmy rattlesnakes, cottonmouths are the most common venomous snake in central Florida. Back in the late ‘90’s, before the catastrophic summer of wildfires in ’98, Terry Farrell and I used to make frequent trips to Tiger Bay State Forest in the spring to find cottonmouths. Road-cruising up Gopher Ridge Road, we would at times find as many as 30-40 cottonmouths in an afternoon. From the road. Most were in roadside ditches and pools that were shrinking late in the dry season, concentrating the small fish and tadpoles into a dense stew of snake food. Cottonmouths would gorge themselves on the hapless fish, which in the final stages of pool shrinkage, had absolutely nowhere to escape to. The snakes would at times prise nearly dead fish or tadpoles out of the damp mud. Unfortunately, the wildfire summer of ’98 drastically changed the ecological dynamics and hydrology of that section of Tiger Bay, so such fantastic aggregations are no more.

So I had tons of photos of cottonmouths, doing things vastly more interesting than crossing a road. But on this particular day, for me that animal might just as well have been a first Volusia County record of a canebrake rattlesnake or something similarly spectacular. And she was totally cooperative. She let me drive to within about 10’ of her for my initial bout of record shots, and then stayed right where she was while I jockeyed the car back and forth to catch her from several angles. She was acutely aware of my presence, tracking me visually and tongue-flicking occasionally. But she wasn’t threatened at all – not once did she do the signature cottonmouth gape, vibrate her tail, rear to strike, or show any other sign of an aggressive or defensive response. Cottonmouths (and pigmy rattlesnakes) have gotten a bad rap for their supposed aggressiveness; they will certainly go bad ass when forced into a defensive situation, but they would far rather stay chill and crawl away without any fanfare. Whit Gibbons and his colleagues at the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology lab have documented the mostly amiable responses of cottonmouths to human provocation. Pigmy rattlesnakes are similarly demonized as being overly aggressive, but that just ain’t so either.

After our photo shoot, she crawled slowly off the road using the concertina style.

So to any of my friends among the serpent kingdom who might be contemplating crossing that road I’m traveling at some point in the future, I say this: Go ahead. Make my day.

Volusia Naturalist

A celebration of natural history

Category Archives: Trip reports

Shameful shit

May 18, 2014

Lekking in DeLeon Springs

March 8, 2014

Hunting ghosts

February 23, 2014

The Ultimate Ocala Loop

January 26, 2014

A snipe hunt in Ocala National Forest

Title credit: E. Eugene Spears

Gray day, brown birds

November 15, 2013

Remembering old friends

November 10, 2013

Reconnoitering the rim

September 14, 2013

Chewk!

September 8, 2013

How a snake made my day

August 31, 2013

May 18, 2014

Share this:

March 8, 2014

Share this:

February 23, 2014

Share this:

January 26, 2014

Share this:

Title credit: E. Eugene Spears

Share this:

November 15, 2013

Share this:

November 10, 2013

Share this:

September 14, 2013

Share this:

September 8, 2013

Share this:

August 31, 2013

Share this: