A Bat and a Prayer

The following is a post made by a friend, Brian Houha, to a bulletin board we both belong to. Some might say these stories are only anecdotes, but I say that anecdotes are hints to the wise.

"Bird migrations through south Florida are at a peak right now. At about noon today, I was in the parking lot of the Pompano Harness Track when I saw six crows chasing after a small light brown winged creature that turned out to be a bat. The crows were much faster than the bat and as each was about to grab it with its beak, the bat dodged and weaved. Soon there were 12 crows after the bat. They took turns attacking the bat. But each time I thought the bat was a goner, the bat dropped and outmaneuvered the crow's closing lethal approach. Seconds after one crow missed, another was coming in for the kill. The slow moving bat continued to dodge their attacks. After a few minutes almost all of the crows lost interest and continued on their southern migration. The bat was closing in on some trees when I had to go. There was only one crow on his tail.

"It is rare to find bats in south Florida. I haven't seen one for about a decade. They are not fast fliers like birds and I can see that predation from birds was a major factor that led them to become nocturnal."

Brian Houha, January 13, 2009

Darwinian Cooters

Returning home from my daily morning walk to the post office about a month ago, I spied a female Peninsular Cooter (Pseudemys peninsularis) in a vacant lot about 250 meters from the edge of Orange Lake. She was accompanied by four Common Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), three standing patiently beside her and the fourth in a tree. Unfortch, I didn't have my camera with me at the time.

Clearly, she was making a nest for the eggs she planned to lay, and the crows were hanging out waiting to see if they could snatch some eggs as they emerged from her cloaca. She had already dug the flask-shaped hole and may have been just about to lay the eggs when I came along. Ordinarily, I would have left them all alone with the forces of evolution, but this time my head swirled with thoughts:

"This turtle is too far from the water for the hatchlings to have a fighting chance to make it to water before predators spot them.

"Will the hatchlings even be able to find their way to the water in the first place? Mama can easily walk over lawn, but even clipped grass is taller than baby turtles, making it extremely difficult for them to walk through.

"The lady turtle has made a big mistake nesting in this spot. If I relocate her to a nesting site closer to the lake and safer, maybe I would be encouraging “bad genes” to survive and multiply? Perhaps I should leave it alone and let Darwinian evolution carry on? How else will turtles learn to cope with lawns and roads and an overpopulation of cats, crows and coyotes?

But NO!!! That is the wrong attitude. Humans have overpopulated the world and are driving down populations of many formerly common species. In the case of our freshwater turtles, we surround lakes with turtle killers (dogs, cats, lawnmowers, lawns, roads, cars, ...) and allow almost unlimited harvesting of what's left for export to China. Turtles need all the help they can get.

I carried the turtle back to my home and placed it where the soil is relatively soft, is well above the water table, and gets about a half-day of direct sunlight. I then placed her under a wood box having a wire covering and left her alone, hoping that she would make a new nest and lay her eggs under the relative safety of my watchful eyes and wood-and-wire box. Unfortunately, she lost the mood in the cage (duh) and didn't lay any eggs. Since I had to leave on an out-of-town field trip the next day, I released her on her own recognizance and hope she is doing well.

Chris' Rope Stand

Some outdoors folk like to rappel down or climb up ropes in their sport hobby; including mountain climbers, rock climbers and cavers. My friend Chris is none of these, but he does enjoy reading while sitting in the canopy of a tall tree, so he wanted to install a rope stand in his tallest loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) tree. Chris knew that I had experience setting up rope stands so he asked me to assist and I readily agreed. I love to see the exuberance in people when they first experience their own first rope stand. In the pics, Chris is the one with the ear-to-ear grin.

Chris used a bow-fishing rig to shoot a 40 lb test monofilament fishing line over the base of a 4-inch thick limb right in the thick of the canopy – perfect! We used the monofilament to pull an eighth-inch braided nylon line over the limb, and then used the eighth-inch line in turn to pull up a 9/16-inch (11 mm) nylon kernmantle static rope (PMI Pit Rope) up over the limb and back down to the ground. We tied off one end of the rope to an adjacent tree, and left the other end of the rope hanging relatively straight down for climbing and rapelling.

I climbed first as Chris has but little experience with SRT (single rope technique) gear. Several small branches and rotten limb stumps had to be removed on my way up the rope. Also, I had to maneuver among several limbs from subcanopy trees that the rope passed through. Upon reaching the limb crotch where the rope draped over, I used about 10 ft of 1-inch tubular webbing and a carabiner to hold the rope up off the tree limb. This “redirect” reduces damages to both tree and rope, and allows Chris to pull the rope down at night while replacing it with a leader line.

Chris had borrowed the bowfishing rig and was totally inexperienced at using it, but his first shot could not possibly have been any better. It passed over the same branch high in the canopy that we ultimately chose to use to anchor the rope. Talk about beginner's luck!

We did not have a measuring tape today to determine the distance between the ground and the anchor carabiner up in the tree, but based on the known length of the rope and how much was left over when rigged, I estimate the total height of the tree is possibly in excess of 120 ft, and the ground-to-canopy-anchor almost certainly in excess of 100 ft, perhaps 110 ft. That would make it the highest rope stand I have participated in constructing.

I then ran Chris through the basics of SRT, using a spare set of my gear on the rope just a few feet off the ground. He would use ascenders to climb a few feet up, then change over to descending gear and rappel a few feet down. He did this exercise twice, at which point I decided he was ready to climb to the canopy. About 50 ft up the rope, he admitted he was a little scared, but he continued on up anyway all the way to the canopy. He whooped and hollered upon attaining the canopy, definitely a happy canoper.

A Leo Humbled

A 12yo girl named Amber and her parents are neighbors of mine. One person gave her a monitor and another loaned her a computer, and she wanted to hook up to the internet. Being unsuccessful, the landlady suggested she come to me for help. I mostly acted as an advisor while Amber did all the shopping and wiring and softwaring, and finally succeeded in getting herself on line. Good for her! She's a smart and resourceful kid.

Her parents thought to do something nice for me in return, so they invited me to have dinner with them before I worked on their computer one evening. The meal was steak, baked potato with sour cream and salad with blue cheese dressing. How did they know blue cheese is my favorite? The steak was lean and tender and the potato was perfect. Yum! I gobbled it up!

Amber's dad growls and barks and swears at his wife, daughter and pit bull every time he speaks to them in front of me, and loudly, too. Of course, he was polite to me that evening, so I talked as soothingly as I could. During dinner, Amber's mom reminded “everyone” that they didn't have to eat everything on their plates. Nevertheless, it was late, I was very hungry and had spent a couple of hours on the project, so I cleaned my plate.

Being preoccupied with chatting and watching TV, and eating, I wasn't paying attention to what everyone else was dining on. As we finished our meal, Amber asked her dad if he had saved her any meat and he replied “Hell no!” It sounded to me like he said it, not with anger, but more like satisfaction. Puzzled, I looked around at Amber's and her mother's plates and realized they were not eating steak. Only Amber's dad and I had meat that night; they had served me her mother's steak. Possibly, Amber might not get meat with her meals on occasion. What I thought was her mom's platitude about not eating everything was actually a plea to share, and I had missed it. Amber and her mom would have had some meat with dinner had her father been more generous and I more alert.

They don't make much money. Amber's mom is a maid at the trailer park, and I suspect her dad works at minimum wage jobs too. I had forgotten what it is like to grow up so poor that dinner might be sparse and “uneven.” I am reminded of a pride of lions, where selfish alpha males eat first and only afterward are females and young allowed to feed on the leftovers.

Price's Scrub Greenway Tract

Price's Scrub Greenway is a 955-acre (382 ha) tract containing mostly pond pine flatwoods, mesic hammock and various scrub habitats located in north Marion County, FL: http://tinyurl.com/5qyfjb

The property has been recently acquired and its boundaries were marked and dirt roads mowed, so it was easy to bike around. The first slide (from top) shows a wet flatwoods topography seen when first entering the property in the SE. Its thin canopy is dominated by pond pine (Pinus serotina), and it appeared that what was a subcanopy of scrub live oaks (Quercus geminata) and rusty lyonia (Lyonia ferruginea) has been roller-chopped. Immediately to the left of the dirt road you can see some of the undisturbed shrub cover composed of saw-palmetto (Serenoa repens), fetterbush (Lyonia lucida), dwarf huckleberry (Vaccineum myrsinites), broomstraw (Andropogon virginicum) and earleaf greenbriar (Smilax auriculata).

Photo two (2nd from top) shows the effects of the roller-chopper on the scrub live oaks and shrubs in the flatwoods. Presumably, roller-chopping is being done as part of an effort to restore the original character of the pond pine ecosystem. Photo 3 shows more detail of the undisturbed pond pine flatwoods; clearly, there is too much underbrush to perform a controlled burn, so roller-chopping seems to be a good start toward restoration.

As the topography becomes more ridge-and-swale-like, the ridges support a well-drained soil with a relatively deep water table. This is habitat for sand pine (P. clausa), scrub live oak, rusty lyonia, saw-palmetto, ... Sound familiar? Yep, it is almost the same flora as what dominates pond pine flatwoods, except for the sand pine (photo 4) and the far lesser density of low shrubs and ground plants.

As I followed an old road it petered out and became an extremely well-traveled animal trail (photo 5). Its surface was easily a couple of inches below grade, with abundant prints of dog (Canis familiaris) and/or coyote (Canis latrans), raccoon (Procyon lotor), feral pig (Sus scrofa x vittata) and whitetail deer (Odocoileus virginianus). I found scat along this trail and on the southern boundary road, large enough for a large dog or coyote, some filled with hair and others filled with persimmon fruit (Diospyros virginiana). This trail went through open stretches as in photo 5 and through tunnels underneath tangled brush as in photo 6.

I wondered how many other people had traveled this gymnastic route. You never know who's out there in them thar woods. Once, while wading through saw-palmettos on Long Island (between Big Talbot and Little Talbot Islands in NE Florida), I came across a diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus) that had been killed by a blow to the neck with a machete. The blood was still trickling down the side of the dead animal, so it had evidently been killed only a few minutes before. Where was the killer? Who was the killer? Was he watching me? I never saw or heard another soul while I was out there that day. Creepy.

Indeed, I was not the only person to have traveled that wildlife trail, as evidenced by a trap array set by wildlife biologists some time ago (photo 7). This array consisted of a line of plastic shade screen that was stretched out and held up by wooden stakes (now rotted and fallen), buried partly in the ground, with a series of aluminum funnel traps placed adjacent to the shade screen. The purpose is to capture small rodents, snakes, lizards and frogs - they encounter the shade screen and follow it until coming up to and entering a funnel trap. Funnel trap arrays are commonly used in Florida scrub habitats to sample for particular species of imperiled rodents and herps.

I wonder why they didn't remove the array? There were the skeletal remains of a frog or toad in one of the traps. One trap had a hole ripped into its side – evidently a predator wanted the catch within. Several other trap funnels had been reversed as though someone had done it deliberately, or a trapped animal had forced its way out. I rendered all the remaining traps inoperable so that no more critters would be killed by them.

The SE corner of the tract has a borrow pit that has become a well-vegetated pond (photo 8). Perhaps only 50 percent open water, the pond's marsh supports grasses and sedges, plus a pretty, a mass yellow flowering of a tickseed (Coreopsis sp.). Large mats of a macrophytic alga or other plant cover the benthic habitat of the pond. The only birds I saw here were the Eastern phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) and red wing blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus). Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) and a hard-shelled turtle (Chrysemys sp) were common.

Uplands surrounding the borrow pond are dominated by an immature, early successional mixed forest (mesic hammock) dominated by laurel oak (Q. hemisphaerica), water oak (Q. nigra), sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), black cherry (Prunus serotina), sugarberry (Celtis laevigata) and occasional loblolly (P. taeda) or other pines. Quality hardwoods are uncommon, and include southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora), pignut hickory (Carya glabra) and winged elm (Ulmus alata).

Small blackwater streams drain the southern and eastern portions of the property, exiting under I-75 and then eventually discharging to the northeast into Tuscawilla Lake. Photo 9 shows one of the creeks, incised through the sandy clay soil. These creeks usually have wetland trees growing along their banks, including sweetbay (M. virginiana), swamp tupelo (Nyssa biflora var. sylvatica), swampbay (Persea palustris) and red maple (Acer rubrum). The little palm beside the pictured creek is a needle palm (Rhapidophyllum hystrix). It is almost impossible to walk alongside the creeks due to dense, often thorny lianas and shrubs. Perhaps someday when the overstory of the creek and adjacent hammock are more mature, the route will be easier.

Feral pigs are a scourge of Florida's wetlands and wetland-upland ecotones. For example, photo 10 shows a portion of a creek that has been mucked up by feral pigs. Fortunately, Florida's wildlife authorities recognize the problem and allow hunters to to kill them without limit. This practice has significantly reduced their population in Florida as near as I can tell.

Photo 11 is a small sinkhole or borrow pit within a stream wetland. It probably makes a good watering hole for wildlife.

The northern part of the site appears to drain internally, but I was unable to find roads or trails going into that region to see.

The last photo is a “tuxedo” (mostly black with some white) dog that started to chase me away from his home, but I befriended him and he decided to follow me all the way from the northern side of the tract southward to my van. When I finished putting my bike and gear into the van, the dog jumped into the vehicle and sat down as though he is used to riding home in cars. Now it was time for me to take him home! I clearly heard him say, “Home, James.” So I drove him home.

Tropical Storm Fay

Tropical Storm Fay dumped only about 8 inches of rain here on Orange Lake. The water level has risen only by about that amount so far, but it may rise more over the next few days as the surrounding uplands and wetlands drain into it. McIntosh has a lot of swatches of Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) lying around, plus small tree limbs and cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto) fronds. Storm winds were only ~25 to 35 mph, but they are causing me some grief, as evidently they hit me harder than anyone else in town.

A 17-inch sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) broke about 2 ft underground and the tree fell toward my RV and van. It came to rest on five points: the tree's base and three limbs (bottom image), and the front left corner of the van (2nd from bottom). One of the supporting limbs smashed thru the power box framework and came to rest on top of the phone box after “hammering” it into the rain-softened ground a few inches (3rd pic). At this point I had lost electric power in a windy and drizzling rain, my van was helping to hold up a very heavy tree that could shift at any time, and my RV was blocked so that I couldn't move the RV to safer ground even if I wanted to.

My plan was to get the tree off everything and then try to reestablish electricity. All four of the trailer park's chain saws didn't work, so I had to drive into Gainesville to get mine out of storage. I spent most of Saturday chain-sawing the tree off everything and into pieces small enuf to move easily, and then moving logs and branches (4th pic) out of the way.

Moving the van out from under the tree was interesting. I held my breath when starting to drive the van backwards and out from under the tree, but fortunately the tree didn't shift toward the van and cause additional damage. Damage to the van was bad enuf, tho, almost $1,300 (I have a $1,000 deductible).

Finally, a small limb fell across the fronds of a cabbage palm in a small garden. In the image (5th pic) you can barely see the limb due to the heavy Spanish moss, but you can clearly see the mass is a jumble of fronds, moss and wood. I started to pull it out of there, but then I remembered the time when Sleazeweasel, Ann, Bill and I were exploring the periphery of a polje in the Yucatan, Mexico, when we encountered just such a mass of detritus and vegetation (only bigger).

Sleaze told us it was a very snakey spot, and that we needed to study it until we spotted “the snake” that “must” be in there. Ok, fine, so we all pretended to study the stupid sticks when suddenly a snake crawled out of the tall grass and over my boot (6th pic)! It was a speckled racer (Drymobius margaretiferus), and I was impressed.

So, I just left the mossy log laying up there in the palms. It will make a good, new microhabitat in this generally snake-unfriendly neighborhood.

Storm Limb

We had a bodacious thunderstorm here on Orange Lake yesterday. It may have rained a couple of inches or more in about 2 hours. The storm was pretty big, as it extended at least all the way to and across Gainesville 15+ miles away. A mighty wind preceded the rain for about 15 – 20 minutes, I estimate at gale force or nearly so. Evidently, the wind circled the perimeter of the storm, as the strong wind was unwavering. I went outside and reveled in its power.

The photo above shows a limb that fell out of a sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) tree during the thunderstorm. As you can see, it fell right spang amongst my RV, van and bonsai dahoon holly (Ilex cassine). Nothing was so much as scratched, say “Hallelujah!” Fortunately, I had put away the RV's awning just a few minutes before the limb fell. The limb was about 5 inches in diameter at its proximal end, and heavy enough that it would have ripped the awning's fabric and folded its frame. Whew!