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My family had the opportunity to get away to the
Florida Gulf Coast over spring break, where we enjoyed great company, perfect
camping weather and time on the beach. Of course, I also took advantage of the
opportunity to do some wildlife photography, and to follow up on my curiosity
about some of the critters we saw.
Hiking alone one afternoon on a sandy trail through
pine scrub, I spied something brown moving in the vegetation ahead. My first
hopeful thought was, “bobcat!” because park personnel said visitors had seen one
recently. Alas, as I got closer I could see my animal was too small to be a
bobcat, and it was shambling along with its nose in the sand. Just an
armadillo.[Photos by author.]
Armadillos are something of a nuisance at the campground where we
stay because of the way they root around at night, but I’ve never seen one out during
the daytime before. To my great fortune, the one I came upon turned and crossed
the path in front of me, and I had my camera ready.
Why are there armadillos in Florida?
Up until the mid nineteenth century, when they
began an expansion of their range that continues to the present day, armadillos
were not found north of the Rio Grande. That expansion would have gotten them
to Florida on their own by now, but they got a jump-start in the state when
some were released from a small zoo in the 1920s. Armadillos now currently
occupy all suitable habitat in the Sunshine State.
On a different walk in the same area, our group
came across a box turtle. The subspecies found there, Gulf Coast box turtle, is
the largest among North American box turtles, and its shell tends to be dark. The
turtle we found was blackened, though.
Why?
Prescribed burns are used to manage
sand pine scrub in Florida, for the same reasons they’re used to manage natural
areas in the Midwest. They keep invasive plants in check and promote ecosystem
health in various other ways. To judge by the marks on its shell, our turtle
had not only traveled through a recently burned area, it had survived being
caught in the fire.
According to John Roe, a professor of biology at the
University of North Carolina at Pembroke who studies the impact of prescribed
burns on box turtles, they can grow new tissue to replace shell that’s damaged
by fire or other mishaps. But scientists still have much to learn how well
individual turtles survive prescribed burns and how burns affect turtle
populations.
Among the animals I most enjoy seeing in Florida
are the birds, especially herons and egrets. They’re big, they’re beautiful and
they stand stock still for long periods of time—what more could a photographer
ask for? My favorites are snowy egrets, which are more compact than some of
their cousins. In addition to their small size and all-white plumage, snowies
are distinguished by their yellow feet, “golden slippers” in the phrasing of
some guidebooks.
For me, snowy egrets represent hope. Their numbers
were reduced to dangerous lows by the beginning of the twentieth century,
thanks to demand for their feathers to decorate hats. It would have been awful
to lose them, and it could have happened.
But some people called attention to the stupidity
of that path. And they organized. And in response to the pressure they brought
to bear, congress enacted legislation to protect our collective interest in the
preservation of these and other migratory birds in the U.S. Sometimes, when we
really need to, we do get things right.
