Dennis

?

I appreciate your note. We just got back from our trip to Ft. Myers and we saw much of what you talk about.

?

But we also had a very different experience when we went to Ding Darling Sanctuary in Sanibel. After watching hoards of Cattle Egret ( a self introduced species) throughout the city of Ft. Myers (12 birds?per intersection) we saw none in Ding Darling. Not one. We had nice numbers of Spoonbills, White Ibis, Little blues, Tri-coloreds, Gt. Blues, Snowys, Gt. Egrets and Reddish Egrets. The number of Reddish Egrets was more than I have ever seen.

We also saw no grackles, starlings, english sparrows, crows (neither one) in Ding Darling. But then we also only had a couple of Palm? Warblers and Mockingbirds as our only passerines there. And for the whole trip we saw only about five Palm Warblers and a couple of Yellow-rumps. First time I have not seen Yellow-throats.

While a one day trip to Ding Darling is not a good sample I am thinking that in a well supervised area that has minimized the human impact (no food available, and no garbage cans, everybody takes their stuff with them) there was little room for non-native generalists. the specialists had their niches and they were keeping them protected.?

But overall Florida is an experience that I have to?gird for. We did visit the location of the winter homes of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison?and saw the picture of John Burroughs standing with the two of them as they prepared to go to the Everglades (in 1914) ?and Burroughs looked like he was wondering what the assembly line of cars was going to bring to them all.

Jim Rosso
Arlington, Virginia
703-534-6026
http://www.birdcentral.net/index.htm



-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Paulson <dennispaulson at comcast.net>
To: Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 4:24 pm
Subject: [Tweeters] Florida - land of the future



Hello, tweeters.



I just returned from a week in southern Florida. Good birding, really fine warm sunshine, lots of dragonflies and other critters, great trip overall.




But I did get some insights into the future, more valuable (if depressing) to me than knowing who's going to win the Super Bowl.




We got into Fort Lauderdale late at night, then headed out from there south to the Keys the next morning. Driving from our motel to get to the freeway south, I was impressed by the numbers of birds along the road. What were they? Huge numbers - hundreds - of Rock Pigeons, Eurasian Collared-Doves, Mourning Doves, Boat-tailed Grackles, and European Starlings. Notice that 3 of these 5 are non-native. In the midst of this, there was a flock of over 20 Monk Parakeets coming in to bird feeders in a trailer park. I just had to shake my head, remembering what I had posted about a future of successful species, most of them non-native.



I should add that as you drive to the Keys, you pass wetlands with herons and egrets and ibises, Ospreys everywhere, plenty of native birds to be seen as soon as you get away from the human landscape.




The Florida Keys were instructive. The most common land birds down there were, again, Rock Pigeons, Eurasian Collared-Doves, and European Starlings. No boat-tails and relatively few Mourning Doves in the Keys. Common Ground-Doves, another member of this successful family, seem to have declined greatly since I lived in Florida 50 years ago. Most common water birds Laughing Gulls, another human commensal. Interestingly, White Ibises seem to be very comfortable with people and quite adaptable, so they'll be with us in the future. We saw them feeding at open dumpsters with Black Vultures, Cattle Egrets, and Boat-tailed Grackles.




In the megalopolis on the west coast, from Naples to Fort Myers, again the same species were the most common (didn't see any more Monk Parakeets), with the addition of Fish Crows. Fish Crows down there are comparable to our crows around here, abundant in the cities (they didn't even occur that far south when I lived down there!) and collecting in huge roosts. There were never crows in the Keys, but a few Fish Crows have made their way all the way down to Key West now.




I don't know what all the pigeons and collared-doves are feeding on. There must be an awful lot of seeds down there, but I don't think they're all at bird feeders. The Rock Pigeons nest under the bridges along the Keys now, at least I assume they do, as there were flock after flock of them perched on the wires above those bridges. This wasn't the case when I lived down there. I think Rock PIgeons more and more are adapting to country life, as long as they have "cliff ledges" (bridges, highway overpasses, etc.) on which to nest. I should add that I estimated 1,000 Double-crested Cormorants roosting on the wires in our afternoon drive back up the Keys. This is a very successful native species (more and more I see birds as "birds of the future" or not).




The Keys are bereft of native land birds, in comparison with a half-century ago. Cardinals were common then; we didn't see any on this trip, although I'm sure there must be some. A variety of warblers could always be seen in winter years ago, but we had to be happy with a few Palms and a redstart on this trip. The habitats are still great down there, especially on Key Largo, where it is gratifying to see how much tropical woodland has been preserved, but birds were scarce to absent anywhere in that habitat.




Hawks were more common on the Keys than they used to be. American Kestrels were more common there than anywhere else we went (north to Sanibel), I suspect because of the abundance of Brown Anoles in the Keys. This introduced lizard was very local when I lived down there, just around Miami and Key West, but they are everywhere in the Florida Peninsula now, far more abundant than all the rest of the lizards put together, and you have to work to see any of the other lizard species. It seems likely to me that they are outcompeting the native lizard species, and I wonder how many insects Brown Anoles are eating that might have gone to small insectivorous birds (or dragonflies).




We saw 3 Cooper's Hawks in the Lower Keys, I thought a surprising number, but then I realized that their food had also increased tremendously. I saw one carrying a collared-dove (in fact, it flew right by me and dropped the dove at my feet when surprised to see me standing there) and another chasing one right down the main US highway on one of the small keys. There are enough doves and pigeons down there to feed most of the bird-eating raptors in Florida!




If you fancy fish, south Florida is the place for you. In the canals just about anywhere, there are as many or more introduced as native species, especially cichlids of all kinds. It's an aquarist's dream, but no one has figured out how to get the fish back in the aquaria. Some of them are herbivores, some effective predators. I don't know if people are studying their ecological effects, but I hope so.




Red-eared Sliders were in the ponds in the Lower Keys, just as they are in Lake Washington. They are native to south-central US, but the pet trade has spread them everywhere. In the Everglades and north, native turtles are still very common, but alligators are incredibly abundant, and I wonder how anything survives in the alligator holes and canals where 6-8' individuals are everywhere you look. I wonder about small turtles in particular (just about all we saw were very large adults). I suspect the abundance of alligators may explain why we saw no gallinules, moorhens, or coots at Everglades NP's famous Anhinga Trail, and all of the wading birds were up on the road, on boardwalks, or in very shallow weedy areas. When I was a kid there, I wouldn't hesitate to go wading or swimming anywhere. Now I would advise against it.




It's still a wonderful place for birding, as the long-legged waders are widespread and mostly common and seemingly tamer than they were in my childhood. I think selection for tameness is one of the big selective pressures on animals to survive in the human milieu. Especially in the Big Cypress area, there are still miles of roads and trails through relatively pristine?(except for the invasive species)?habitats, and you can get away from the horrible sprawling developments that dominate the coastal areas and the northern interior. If you go to the right places, it's a birder's paradise, and something of a time machine.



-----

Dennis Paulson

1724 NE 98 St.

Seattle, WA 98115

206-528-1382

dennispaulson at comcast.net







=


_______________________________________________
Tweeters mailing list
Tweeters at u.washington.edu
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters


________________________________________________________________________
More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com