The Paradise of the Birds

            You know the kind of birds you don't see much of in New England or the Northeast -- pelicans, storks, ibis, spoonbills, anhinga? We found them in Florida. You could hardly miss them.

            Given there size, I wouldn't want to see the birds we saw in Delray Beach, on the Atlantic coast side of the Florida peninsula, up here in the North. I'd hate to see them trying to get around in all this snow.

            These water-loving birds belong down there. Big and boldly marked, beautifully plumed and designed avian models built to last, revealing their reptilian roots in their long, sinuous necks; living by and in and off the water. Nesting. Poking around in the twig and branch furnishings of their recently constructed domiciles; feeding their young, stalking the shallows for prey, diving like ducks. And keeping up a three-note querulous squawk when the alligator, fat and sleek and silent, floated ominously over to a prime wetlands nesting site, the busy, multi-species, densely populated, cypress island I deemed "the Paradise of the Birds."[Top photo]

            This breeding spot was a mere dozen feet from the promontory of the pedestrian boardwalk, roofed as a viewing stand. Someone should have been selling scorecards.

            The tiny island was filled with infants in nests, already well hatched, constantly hungry, some adults walking among them. Other adults just -- big white, fluffy storks with dark, mottled-necks and heads the proportion of not so fat erasers on long pencils -- just hanging out, it appeared, taking up valuable space on the cypress tree-island, maybe waiting to see if they were needed. Perhaps to make a delivery?

            Babies on the way? Go get the stork. Here's a question: Who brings the stork's babies?

            The last of these bird names cited, 'anhinga,' is a word I could not pronounce. Surely I'd seen the name on paper, but never the bird in the flesh. Florida took care of that.

            According an the source online anhinga "sometimes called snakebird, darter, American darter, or water turkey, is a water bird of the warmer parts of the Americas." The name comes from the Brazilian Tupi language and means devil bird or snake bird.

            Stay with me as I try to match up photos of the birds we saw in the "bird paradise" of the Delray Beach water division recharge area (in an area called The Wakodahatchee Wetlands) and in a federal conservation area described as the northern border of the Everglades (called the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge) with the identifications I found one place or another, the signboards down there or the internet back home.

            We saw the the anhinga in various states of plumage, including the tan serpentine neck on the dark body.[second photo]

            We see great egrets -- sleek, white, long-legged wading birds -- up north, mostly in summer. In the Delray Beach wetlands we found a number of big white birds looking like great egrets but with a green coloring on their heads near the beak. [third photo] Certainly not a marking on the great white egrets I have regularly spied on and tried to photograph in the salt marshes of Quincy.

            Here's the answer: During breeding season for great egrets, "lores" (the area from the bill to the eyes) turn lime green.  In other seasons these spots are "primarily a dirty yellow." So, what we have are great egrets dressed for a season we never see up north.

            The roseate spoonbill: We saw it in the distance, the reddish coloring glimpses as it opened wings to fly and glide down to a perch at the edge of something. We have never seen a white bird of such size with red on its wings. It took finding a picture of it on a signboard for me to figure out what it was. [fourth down, internet photo]

             The white ibis, its beak curved downward, a gentle scimitar. [fifth down, internet photo]

            And ruling over the cypress island nesting areas, the wood storks. I could see why it was believed to be good luck to have a stork nest on your roof, something shining and bright to look at through the dark months of early winter.

            Cormorants, nesting in those same cypress trees, we do see up in our parts [sixth down].

            Many great blue herons stalked and flew in these wetlands as well[seventh down]. We do see these where they live, wetlands, ponds, rivers. Some of the largest, most spectacular wild birds we see, during migratory season, or summer or when the water stays open. Not, I think, this winter.

           

            And though we never see them up north, we somehow no difficulty at  identifying the alligators. [71]

            The birds hooted a three-note rhythm, again and again, keeping up the warning siren for as long as the alligator lurked in the water below the island. Mr. Gator was not in a hurry to vacate the premises. We could hear the continuously repeated warning cry even as we finished our loop of the boardwalk built for land-locked creatures and headed to the parking lot.

            'Later,' I thought.

The Garden of Rejuvenation: We're all Snowbirds Under the Skin

            We just spent four days in Florida, make that south Florida -- make that sunny Florida -- and were in no hurry to leave.

            Taking our departure on Sunday afternoon -- strong steady breeze off the ocean, alternating periods of clouds and sun, seventies along the coast, eighty inland -- while the regulars in the 'compound' (condo, retirement home, time-share? which is the right term?) sat or lounged in the shade, near the pool, in or out of the sun, finding their own right dose of the day's pleasing warmth, our little party of emigres felt like the wicked angels being driven out of paradise. No one of course was driving us away (except Saul, who kindly chauffered his parents to the airport), but the facts of life were calling us back north.

            Just an hour earlier I had been diving through the surf at Delray Beach and still retained the inner glow that comes from remembered something your body liked to do a long time ago (and much more often) and probably missed. It makes you think the sign outside of the compound's office  -- "The ocean solves everything" -- might be onto something.

            Some absurdly provincial notions about the quality of life available in Florida had deterred me from actually experiencing what life in south Florida was all about, especially in early March. Early March in Delray Beach felt like early July in New England. But the ocean -- that larger-than-(human) life healer of quotidian disturbances  (such as, just for discussion's sake, inflammation of the shoveling muscles) -- is never in New England what it is in warmer climates. In a word, warm. Warm to the touch of human flesh.

            The wind was blowing hard off the ocean Sunday morning, hard enough to dissuade us from devoting the day to a boat cruise along the coast. Later, when the sun came partially out, and we walked through town, and along the intracoastal waterway, and then paid our farewell visit to the beach, the gray wind off the water and hard rush of the surf told me I would never get into that ocean. Five minutes later, however, when my feet got used to its calming touch, I was beginning to change my mind.

            We walked the surf line for a while, past fishermen, past the place of the frolicking dogs, past the surf boarders, past the strong young man mastering the para-sail balance and slicing through the surf, until we finally put down our towels, sat in the sand, and faced our moment of truth. Truth was (or contained in part) these little glassine plastic-looking pockets of blue-veined transparency that my Florida water-literate son told me were jellyfish. Actually, Portuguese man-of-war. Small creatures when they wound up drying out on the wrack line. But all tentaclely if encountered amid the waves.

            I decided I couldn't see them in the green, surf-charged water and gathered myself for what cannot really be described as "my swim." It's more a matter of jumping sideways through the waves until I get fully wet and then diving under them, or over them, or across them; occasionally launching a few furious strokes in one direction or another, though for no purpose but the feel of it. Whenever I come across an ocean with waves I try to body surf. At Delray Beach the waves are quick and choppy rather than steep; they don't have that long stately build-up that calls out to surfers of all sorts. This ocean had a different pulse; its own. I caught a few waves for short rides, but my 'swim' consisted mostly of the thoroughly childish pleasure of playing with the waves.

            I think the sign outside the 'office' might be right. The ocean just solved my winter.

In the Garden of the Snow: The Hawk and the Cardinal

            Another hawkish moment. This one almost hard to credit.

            Something is happening in the tall, bare shrub. I notice it, glancing idly at the kitchen window which looks out at the bird feeder. The shrub in question is a scrawny bit of foliage, some variety of crab apple perhaps (or perhaps not), that serves mainly as a launching base for birds that wish to linger near the feeder. The cardinals favor it. For months I rarely look out at it without seeing a cardinal or two; sometimes two males, on occasion two males and two females.

            Glancing over on this occasion, however, waiting for coffee to reheat in the microwave (yet again), I see a male cardinal, but also another bird, darker and a little larger, flapping its wings in what appears to be high anxiety.

            The familiar red bird is also in motion, but in a more reserved fashion, hopping from one thin ascending branch to another. Exhibiting no anxiety; showing no interest at all in flying away. My first thought is that the cardinal is chasing away or somehow spooking this other bird. The other bird has opened its wings and jerks about for a second or two in an agitated flutter.

            You see pigeons flutter, panic. But this bird is somehow less plump and more solid than a dove, its wings broader.

            So, I think, maybe we have a bird pursuing a cardinal. If so, then there is only one choice: a hawk.

            But this bigger bird is no longer, if it ever was, seeking contact with the red one. It doesn't want anything to do with it. It wants to get away. It wants to get out of the confined cell-like spokes of the shrub's ascending branches, away from a place too narrow for it to maneuver. In saying this, of course, I am reconstructing what I believe I saw.

            The bird, I decide, might be one of the small hawks, looking for a meal. It has gone after the prominent red bird. The smaller birds, the sparrows, scuttle away at any movement within 50 yards of the feeder; they're long gone now. The cardinal however, lingers with the shrub. The hawk darts in after him.

            But it's a mistake, the hawk realizes when it tries to open its wings to maneuver and get an angle from which to strike. The cardinal simply slips away from perch to perch on the close-set branches. The hawk finds its wings tangled, flapping against the branches, an uncomfortable sensation. It panics; wants to get out of there. That's the moment, I believe, I look out and catch the end of the encounter.

            I watch the bigger (though not very big), darker bird launch itself, angle away from the shrub, so that its wings can grab the air. It sails out of sight. 

            When I step out on the porch to investigate, I spot it perched now on a thin branch extending down from the tall shade tree, our street-side maple. I take the photo.

            When I zoom the image on the screen, it really does look like a hawk. One of the two smallest ones in this are, a Cooper's hawk or a Sharp-shinned hawk. They are not all that much bigger than a male cardinal -- especially, according to the "feederwatch" website, the Sharp-shinned hawk, which averages 12.5 inches long, Similar in size to a jay or dove (avg. 10-14″ long).

            Other details from feederwatch: Sharp-shinned hawks are wide at the shoulder and get distinctly narrower down to the hips. Also: "Usually a Sharp-shinned Hawk’s head looks small, and a Cooper’s Hawk’s head looks large. Sharp-shinned Hawks appear short-necked; Cooper’s Hawks appear tall."

             Of course, the reality is that all I can say for sure is I'm seeing an interesting dark-colored bird in a tree.

            I haven't seen the hawk again. My only concern is that, lately, I'm not seeing the cardinals either. Let's hope I'm just jumping to conclusions.         

Garden of Verse-Virtual: March Moments

            My favorite online literary journal (a highly prejudiced view), Verse-Virtual, has just published its latest issue, uncoincidentally referred to as the March issue, with another contribution by yours truly. Please take a look if you have a chance. The link is:

http://www.verse-virtual.com/robert-c-knox-2015-march.html

            These poems are very wintry. They're about shadows, snow, memory, and the few wintry creatures that keep us company, if only on the other side of the window glass -- mostly birds. I've written about the hawk ("The Hawk Who Loved Me") before, that was back some time where you could imagine walking in the Quincy marshes without fear of perishing somewhere stuck in the snow with your legs plunged into a hole up to your waist. (Fortunately that only happened so far in my backyard.)

          The poem about the gull and the sun and moon talking may be my favorite. In times like these who wants to stick to writing about "how things really are"? Maybe that natural desire to be somewhere (at least occasionally) explains half or more of the storytelling, fables, folk tales and poems that human beings have come up with over the centuries?

            That poem, "What Gulls Eat in Winter" begins this way:

the gulls eat snow
in the high noon light
the strand exposed at low tide
rocks and the waste of the ocean floor
snow gleamed everywhere,
reflecting the grinning sun
All this have I done, the sun seemed to say,
I have whipped up the currents, roiled the winds
I blew my hot breath upon the ocean,
squirreled up highs and lows, inversions, reversions, wild temptations
loosed my vengeance on the placid sprawling life
that endures, or thinks it does, all winter by the sea
I have sent my blanket of snow to warm my children
and feed the gulls...

http://www.verse-virtual.com/

            Happy March, everyone. At least we get to say goodbye to February.