Revegetating Orange Lake Spoil Islands

An early afternoon thunderstorm Thursday moved quickly over Orange Lake and cooled the air from the high 80s to the low 80s, and that was enough to set me free! I put on swimming trunks, calf-high rubber boots, a tee shirt and hat, and strode off through the lake margin hammock down to the wetland continuum of shrub swamp, dry marsh, wet marsh and thence back uphill in the dense shrubs dominating the first island.



The goal was to plant some early successional tree seedlings on the island. The four islands are created from dredge spoil and are vegetated by invasives, both native and exotic. I had been thinking to make a little project of occasionally walking over to the island carrying plant species that might increase the biodiversity of the island. A small collection of black cherry, sweetgum, cabbage palm and sugarberry seedlings were dug up from my plant nursery and bagged for the trip over.

On my previous trips out there the weather had been relatively dry. The island's “soil” had been dessicated and plants had made a only a modest cover on the ground. I figured the summer rains had softened the ground by thoroughly moistening it, but was not prepared for the rampant foliage I met. Elderberry was flourishing everywhere over the island, not just along the its margin, as were pokeweed, blackberry, fireweed and thistle. Passionflower and peppervine, an odd couple in name only, had spread atop much of the shrubbery.

It was a mess of leaves and green stems that looked like it would shade out my poor little tree seedlings. I would be throwing them to the wolves, I thought, so brought them back home for reconsideration. Methinks I need to carry some serious gardening implements out there the next time, and possibly larger transplants, or just forget it.

At any rate, I have been experimenting with my new Garmin GPS 60CSx, and how it can interface with Google Earth. Here is the track of my 3-hour wander:



I was following the edge of the water along the northeast part of the track when I stumbled upon an alligator nest. Judging by the looseness of the top of the pile of dead vegetation that comprised the nest, I'd say that the last sheaf had been placed there only a short time ago. Oh, it wasn't as if the top was still visibly settling in, it's just that the storm had just beat down pretty hard and yet there was this airy looseness about the nest. Creepy. I remained alert while taking the waypoint and photographs, I did.



Did I ever tell you about the time I was flagging wetlands in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL within The Guana? The Guana River comes out of real old residential development in the form of a manicured, eutrophic stormwater reservoir. It drains into the next, old-but-not-quite-as-old residential development that also uses it for stormwater disposal but has left significant portions of its shoreline wild. There I was along this moderately long wild stretch, making slow time through dense shrubs and intertwined vines and golden orb spider webs, when suddenly an Enormous Black Thing erupted from the ground and bolted straight at me!

In the first half-second I figured out it was either a bear or a feral pig or a mature alligator or the largest indigo snake that had ever slithered over the earth. “Well,” I thought, in the next half-second, “if I think this could be a snake, then it must have scales, and if it has scales it cannot be a pig or a bear, and since this is not the Miocene, it must be a 9-foot 'gator running straight at me! ... I'm gonna die.” But then it suddenly turned hard left and made a beeline for the water, and I realized it had simply taken an established path to the water and never intended to attack me.

Several biologists have observed and recorded instances of startled reptiles heading straight for a person only to continue on their trajectory after the person moves aside. Bruce Means wrote about his experiments on the subject using poisonous cottonmouths. He may have been the first to realize that the snakes were just trying to take the shortest path to the escape pod (lake) and that they were not trying to attack. I believe my 'gator was in that same mode.

It's a sin to kill a crane

You know what you get when you don't hunt large animals? You get large animals foraging in your back yard.

I finished pruning a flowering bush raised garden and turned around, and standing about 6ft away was a Florida sandhill crane (Grus canadensis pratensis) feeding on scattered bird seed below my bird feeder. After retrieving my camera from inside the home, the bird had moved to my neighbor's bird feeder where I got these shots from within 8ft of the apparently unconcerned beast.

Another Floodplain Grotto

On Saturday, Sleazeweasel and I visited some mature limestone hammock and cypress swamps along the edge of the floodplain of Florida's southern Withlacoochee River. The day was hot and humid, and my tee shirt was literally saturated and dripping with sweat by the end of the afternoon adventure. Mosquitoes were so bad that we were compelled to take two cans of repellent along on the dayhike.

Sleaze had previously been there to a group of medium-sized caves and wanted to go back and explore further for more. The upland woods are dominated by live oak, laurel oak and sweetgum, and the floodplain edge wetlands by bald cypress, red maple, sweetgum and popash. Although a mature forest landscape, it is in an arrested successional stage due to periodic logging. Fortunately, cattle are excluded where we wandered.

Of particular delight to me, we encountered a small copse of forest-grown live oaks. Most of Florida's huge live oaks are open-grown; that is, they get their start in life in an open field where sunlight is not limiting, so rather than grow straight and tall they grow upward a few feet and then branch out into several to many limbs that are only the diameter of a Brontosaurus neck. Forest-grown live oaks, however, have to compete for sunlight from Day One, so they tend to have a single stem until they can grow up into the canopy where they branch out. One of the oaks in this stand was almost 4ft in diameter appx 50ft above the ground. Now, that's stolid!

The first karst feature we encountered was a small line of low, stepped rock faces within a first order drainage route that might become small waterfalls during storm events. We took GPS readings and moved on. The second feature was a genuine cave containing appx 60 – 70ft of joint-controlled passageway, all of hands-and-knees height and similar width:



We then came upon the caves that Sleaze had promised at the edge of the floodplain along the base of a rocky scarp. They are formed at the river's normal high water elevation by acidic floodwaters primarily along joints. Some of the caves are formed within rock pedestals that rise above the floodplain sediments, with each pedestal containing one or more caves. The pedestals are less than 100ft across in any dimension, and have heights up to perhaps 20ft. The pedestals are within a short floodplain “valley” that extends away from the floodplain axis.

Most of these caves have two or more entrances picturesquely framed with boulders and bedrock. These offer numerous walk-in entrances, skylights and twilight zones extending ex luce in tenebrum.*







Mosses, liverworts, ferns, vines, and other herbs blanket the soft, moist rock. Here the forest canopy is dominated by deciduous trees, including bald cypress, swamp tupelo, red maple, Florida elm, Shumard oak and sweetgum. Sleaze encountered a cottonmouth on his previous trip, but this time we heard only narrowmouth toads, exotic greenhouse frogs and common birds like the Carolina wren, northern cardinal and northern parula warbler.

I get the impression that this little valley once was a cave formed by a small underground stream that was enlarged at the edge of the floodplain where it discharged into the river. Over time the cave roof eroded mostly away as the rock surface eroded downward and the cave roof dissolved upward. The main passage of the cave is the little valley now, and the caves that remain are all that's left of the original cave.



The total effect is spectacular. Imagine walking through tall trees and a lush, subtropical fernery among hanging gardens draped over rock blocks and cliff walls, with the easiest routes being through well-lit caverns. This is truly a jewel of a spot.





*Note: The University of Florida's motto is ex tenebrum in luce, which is Latin for from darkness into light.

Morning Snakes

After spending this morning reviewing the literature on the Southeastern American Kestrel (Falco sparverius paulus) in prep for upcoming field work designed to find nest cavities and foraging habitat, I walked outside to stretch my legs and eyelids:



Then ever so softly I crept over to a marina bulkhead to look down where a week or so ago I had spotted a juvenile cottonmouth (Ancistrodon piscivorus). At first I didn't see a serpent, but as my eyes moved slowly over the tangled marsh vegetation, lo and behold there was an adult moccasin! Unlike the distinctively marked juvenile, this adult was dullish dorsally, dirty yellow below and with a hint of opaqueness to the eyes, so it may be shedding its skin soon:



As I reached out my hand to steady against a utility pole, I looked over and spotted a yellow rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta quadrivittata) an arm's length away amongst my hanging bromeliads:



Aaaahhhhh, with all the rains we are having after so long doing without, the snakes are back in force at Orange Lake. No wonder the red-shouldered hawks (Buteo lineatus) are doing so well here at Sportsmans Cove.

Pulling the Cover Boards

This week I am collecting the herp cover boards we set out over a month ago. We have completed our sand skink assessment and it is now time to remove the boards. Unlike when I was checking them, now I am not raking the soil underneath. Nevertheless, I am seeing far more critters now than when doing the actual survey, and I think it is due to mainly to the weather.

It has become much wetter now that summer afternoon thunderstorms are everyday, several-times-a-day events. This has created conditions under the boards moister than during the spring survey, which in turn has apparently selected for mesic ground dwellers based on my observations.

I also suspect that the longer the cover boards stay out, the more herps they attract. First, the herps have to find the boards, and secondly the boards have to settle in and volatilize off some of their glue chemicals.

Another factor seems to be that particle boards absorb more rain water than plywood, swelling up and remaining cooler. Herps, therefore, do not need to burrow down to escape the summer heat, so they stay on top of the sand where I can easily see them. Therefore, even though I do not like particle board, that's what I am taking back to plant all over the woods of a friend.

Numbers of anole lizards (Anolis carolinensis and sagrei), scrub lizards (Sceloporus woodi) and roaches (3 species) are down, so I suspect the moister conditions select against them. On the other hand, since numbers of snakes are up, perhaps they are just getting eaten?

Yesterday I caught a juvenile coachwhip (Masticophis flagellum) and a milk snake (Lampropelits triangulum). I thought that was a pretty good day but then today I caught another three juvenile coachwhips and four milk snakes! When was the last time you caught four milk snakes in a day? Perhaps this is a common occurrence in the herpetological world?

Ordinarily I would not catch the snakes, but today I was afraid they would be snagged by a hawk if I left them out in the open, so I grabbed each of them and tossed them into cover where hawks could not easily see them. I am also seeing daily maybe three dozen southern toads (Bufo terrestris), a few narrowmouth toads (Gastrophryne carolinensis), and plenty of six-lined racerunners (Cnemidophorus sexlineatus). Saw a skink today that was probably a five-lined skink (Eumeces inexpectatus).

Spiders have increased hugely in number under the boards. They are underneath nearly every board. There is a woolly black web spinner that I think is a scrub specialized species, which I want to look up but not tonight. The second commonest spider is the black widow (Lactrodesmus sp.). I have undoubtedly seen more black widows yesterday or (not and) today than I have seen over the rest of my life! And they all ran away from me, thanky.

In case you are wondering, I checked appx 400 boards daily during the spring and am removing appx 500 boards daily now. If you cipher out the math it might seem that the rate of observations is low. Remember, however, that the habitat has a carrying capacity, and therefore it is possible that a greater density of boards would produce few or no more herps.

Honeybee crisis? Hardly!!!

An article by Green Daily (http://tinyurl.com/pcy98d) has prompted me to write this post.

Plants have been pollinated by wind, water, insects, bats and other vectors for hundreds of millions of years, long before the european honeybee evolved or was dispersed world-wide by beekeepers. None of the honeybee hoopla propounded by agricultural interests acknowledges this important point.

Grains like wheat and rice are pollinated by wind, not eurobees. Any suggestion that a loss of eurobees will have a significant impact on grain production would be a damn lie.

Similarly, in my own garden are numerous species of pollinators busily working the flowers. In fact, rather few of humanity's crops were pollinated by the eurobee until relatively recently. Not surprisingly, those plants continue being pollinated by insects other than the eurobee. Our crops will not be lost despite what we are being spoon-fed by concerned but ignorant ag interests.

Conversely, I suspect that a severe decimation of the world eurobee population could result in an increase of other pollinators that could quite easily make up the difference. Think about it: Ecological science teaches us that a finite resource will support more individuals of multiple species than of a single species. Thus, if the world's eurobee population is decimated, it is far more likely that native pollinators will take up the slack than it is that ag production will fall off. Indeed, it is even possible that there will be MORE pollinators if the eurobee is decimated!

Another factor to consider is that a huge amount of our "produce" is actually feedstock for the meat-raising industry. Perhaps when we eat less meat we will see a decrease in ag acreage, a decrease in pesticide usage with a concomitant increase in natural pollinators and fewer human cancers, a lower eurobee density which could reduce the number and severity of eurobee disease irruptions, and a rise in the diversity and richness of natural insect pollinators, among many other benefits.

I am an ecologist that cares far more for species diversity than for tunnel-visioned parochial concerns over a single kind of bug. I am gratified to know that my vegetable and herb garden is pollinated by miner bees that nest in the sandy clay bank outside my back door, by dung beetles that assist in decomposing raccoon feces under the cabbage palm fruiting inflorescences outside my front door, and by the crab spiders sitting on flowers a-waitin' hapless eurobees to step into their parlors. And, none of the latter species sting me, either, LOL.

The on-going population deflation of the eurobee is yet another example of humans overpopulating earth with monocultures to such an extent that disease vectors evolve quickly into new strains of pests. Ecologically, the irruptions of eurobee diseases are inevitable, after all, this is what happens eventually to so many if not all of our agricultural and horticultural species. Eventually, this could happen to us, too, as we continue to believe that we all have the “right” to have as many children as we want.

Only those who are ignorant of entomology, ecology and history could think that the loss of a single species of pollinator would result in staggering losses to the ag sector. No, it is a 100 percent certainty that we will find ways around our dependence on the eurobee. Any suggestion to the contrary should demand long term empirical evidence before being given any credence.

Let's stop bee-ting around the bush and acknowledge that our ag problems are the consequences of human overpopulation.

Herp Cover Boards

My work lately has been transitioning from field surveys for crested caracara (Caracara cheriway) nests to presence/ absence of sand skinks (Neoseps reynoldsi) and bluetail mole skinks (Eumeces egregious lividus). The two skinks occur only in sandy, xeric habitats on the state's central ridge, primarily the Lake Wales Ridge unit of south-central Florida. Both species are thought to be declining in population as a result of agricultural and other land development, and are thus protected under state and federal laws: http://www.fws.gov/verobeach/images/pdflibrary/sask.pdf

The accepted methodology for xeric skink surveys in Florida utilizes the cover board, which is a 2ft x 2ft sheet of plywood or particle board placed on the ground in promising herp habitat and checked every week or so. The idea is that cover boards imitate natural items like logs and rocks that herps like to hide under. We do not use treated wood as we think it would repel wildlife.

The small sheets we use may be too small for large snakes to hide under, but they attract skinks and a lot of other species. Checking a board consists of lifting up the board and looking for animals and/or their sign, and then using a potato rake to pull up any animals that might be in the soil down to a depth of 4 inches (10cm) or more.

Setting out the boards was hard physical labor, carrying as many as is reasonable up and down steep, loose-sand hills, then clearing out leaf litter and laying out the boards under the hot sun in mostly citrus groves. The second week's work was not much easier, as I had to clear out roots from beneath the boards so that potato rake tines would easily pass through the soil. Now, during the third week, the boards are laid out before us and are properly “cultivated,” so checking them now is relatively easy and kind of like an easter egg hunt.

Based on our work, I can report that these citrus groves have healthy populations of various ant and antlion species, plus the asian roach, american cockroach, palmetto bug (a roach) and cricket. Occasionally, there is a scorpion or centipede under a board. I encountered a black widow spider (Lactrodesmus sp.) under one board, but most of the spiders found are not so infamous. Where leaf litter has not been assiduously removed from beneath a board, rainwater trickling in will result in a musty mini-irruption of fungal hyphae, and no herps.

I have seen several species of rodents under the boards, including the cotton rat (Sigmodon hispidus), cotton mouse (Peromyscus gossypinus) and probably Florida woodrat (Neotoma floridana). They dig resting “forms” and short tunnels immediately under the board (the board is the roof). Usually a mammal will dart away the instant its cover is blown, but occasionally it will be so surprised that it will hesitate for a second, and then I can get a fair look at it. I never rake under those boards, not wanting to mess up their excavation efforts.

The ability of cover boards to concentrate herps (reptiles and amphibians) is pretty good. Sooner or later, cover boards will reveal most of a habitat's ground-dwelling amphibians and lizards, and many of its ground snakes. By “ground,” I mean an animal spends most of its time on top of the ground and/or within the soil.

The eastern narrowmouth toad (Gastrophryne carolinensis) and Southern toad (Bufo terrestris) are mostly found an inch or two under the soil surface under the boards. Some of them are found immediately under the board tucked into a blob of wet sand where rainwater had dribbled in.

Toads are especially easy to harm if one is too vigorous with the rake. Toads are relatively long and wide, presenting a large target to the rake's sharp tines. To minimize this impact, I rake firmly and quickly without jabbing the ground. This is another good reason to “cultivate” the ground under a cover board. Gratifyingly, since learning this way, I have caught two milk snakes (Lampropeltis triangulum) and numerous fat-bodied lizards without any visible injuries.



The two milk snakes were under separate boards about 75ft apart, and were completely immersed in the sand appx 2-3in under their cover boards. I had no idea the first capture was there although I saw unfamiliar tracks in the sand under the board that looked like something had searched under the entire board for something. The second time I saw those tracks I photographed them before raking for and catching the second milk snake.

Another day I found two juvenile coachwhips (Masticophus flagellum) under separate boards. Interestingly, they too were relatively close, being only about 150ft apart.

As you might imagine, we look for tracks, too, not just the animals themselves. And wouldn't you know it? The sand skink makes a peculiar and highly distinctive track as it “swims” just under the surface of the sand. The track is a pretty good imitation of a sine wave: http://tinyurl.com/cggtq8.

Antlion (http://tinyurl.com/d5dzqw) larvae commonly construct their funnel-shaped sand traps under cover boards. Although their tracks are the same width as that of a sand skink, their tracks are more irregular; nonetheless, an antlion track can look skink-like or intersect a skink track just to make things confusing:














And sometimes there is no doubt that a track is NOT that of a skink. This is probably an antlion track:



But although the occasional toad or snake, or antlion, are food for thought, lizards are the bread and butter of our cover boards. Six-lined racerunners (Cnemidophorus sexlineatus) and green anoles (Anolis carolinensis) quite commonly use the boards for respite from the heat of midday. Below is a racerunner that was semi-buried in a blob of moist sand at midday.


















Most of the racerunners under the boards, however, are sitting atop dry sand:













I occasionally find the scrub lizard (Sceloporus woodi) under cover boards, although it is more common in the brush:











The most truly fossorial of all the herps I am finding is the so-called worm lizard (Rhineura floridana): http://tinyurl.com/cb7zgb. This little serpent is neither a worm nor a lizard, nor is it a snake, but is in the suborder Amphisbaenia. It is found only in Peninsular Florida in sandhills. The southern population, which we are encountering, may be an undescribed taxon (http://tinyurl.com/cceeup). Here is a photo of one of the (foot-long) captures:



I highly recommend the use of cover boards to anyone who wants to know what species of ground herps occur in a given area. Although the boards we made are of expensive new wood, you can make cover boards out of any old boards that have not been treated. Remember, many of the herps bury themselves and are not at all visible when you check the board, so be sure to rake, too.