Recovering from Selective Blindness Sydrome

    As travelers, Shirley and I like to say that there a thousand places we want to go to and another thousand we want to go back to. In the “go back to” category is Everglades National Park. In retirement, we have been able to indulge our “go back to” wishes more often. 

   Over the years we became familiar with the park staff who always went out of their way to be welcoming and accommodating. Cindy, for example, brought cantaloupe-size Florida avocados to our campsite because she knew Shirley makes excellent guacamole. Erin seems to have resolved some of the soap opera issues in her life and gone on to better things. Alice has taken Phil’s place at the entrance gate since he retired. (Phil knew us so well he just waved us on through when we arrived without even checking my geezer pass.) As retirees who spend a lot of time in National Parks, we wonder where parks employees go when they retire. Ranger Myrta was responsible for protecting wildlife and introducing college students to the joys of “environmental science.” (More about that later.) Ranger Kirk always asked where we were from every time he saw us. (That would be at least six or seven times on each visit for 10 years.) And his reaction was always the same. “Toledo? I’ve from Akron. I love to eat at Mancy’s when I am passing through Toledo.” Kirk works summers at Canyon Village in Yellowstone. We have never yet run into him there but when we do I’m going to ask him where he’s from.
   We have a comfortable, familiar routine in the Everglades. Every day we are awakened by mockingbirds and then have a nice breakfast in the sunshine. Quite often a hawk comes to perch in a nearby slash pine to see what we are having. The towhees and catbirds also come to see if they can talk us into sharing.

When we hear a mockingbird sing, we know we are someplace nice.

Hey, what's for breakfast?

   After breakfast we head over to the Anhinga Trail. It is an easy mile or so of pavement and elevated boardwalks that takes you out through the saw grass and along Taylor Slough. We try to get there before the school buses arrive with their wild-eyed, noisy cargo. School groups vary widely in their approach to the experience. Some teachers are quite knowledgeable and provide illustrated checklists so students can look for and identify the animals and birds. Other teachers just let the kids run amok. A walk in the park can be either a stimulating educational experience or an escape from it altogether for both educator and educatee.
   On the Anhinga Trail, we encountered a well-disciplined and inquisitive class of fourth graders debating the identity of some birds.
   “Is this Mrs. Kohler’s class?” I asked. (A half hour earlier I had overheard her giving them introductory instructions about what to look for and how to conduct themselves.)
   Their eyes got bigger.
   “How did you know that? How did you know that?” several asked simultaneously, impressed by my clairvoyance.
   “Mrs. Kohler is famous,” I said, “for having world-class students.”
   Mrs. K. came up behind me just in time to hear that comment. From the way she grinned and grabbed my hand. I think she was happy. Good teachers know the value of positive reinforcement. 

Part of the Anhinga Trail is a boardwalk along Taylor Slough.

The beginning of the Anhinga Trail is a paved walkway.

 Everglades National Park is only 45 miles from Miami but most city dwellers and their children have never been there. First timers of any age immediately begin hyperventilating over alligators. It is a little known fact that seeing an alligator leads to Selective Blindness Syndrome (SBS). The chief symptom is that everything except alligators becomes temporarily invisible. There was the lady, for example, who said to her husband, “Just keep walking. There’s nothing to see here.” If she had not been afflicted with SBS, there are quite a few things she might have seen.
   Let’s start with Shirley’s favorite marsh bird, the purple gallinule. (We have also heard it referred to as a “galleon,” a “Galileo,” and a “Galliano.”) It is a blue, chicken-size relative of the marsh hen or mud hen or coot with a red and yellow beak and a pale blue forehead. It really is quite handsome though I wouldn’t call it purple exactly.

The purple gaillinule is Shirley's favorite.

  

   And speaking of marsh hens, coots, or mud hens, there are lots of them too. There is a rumor that Muddy and Muddonna spend the off season with relatives in Florida. We have never seen them but there are a lot of old coots in Florida.
   It is easy to miss or fail to recognize a gallinule when you do see it. But there are thousands of large birds that you can’t miss and most of you would recognize immediately.
   A fellow tourist came up to me and asked, “Are you a bird watcher?” I hesitated before answering. TV sit-coms always cast “bird watchers” as socially awkward geeks who lack even the charm and savoir faire of Sheldon Cooper.
   “What,” he asked, “is that big black bird that looks like a vulture?”
   “Well,” I said, “we call that a black vulture.”

   There are also turkey vultures that have red heads instead of black. But only card-carrying geeks know that sort of thing.

   Vultures, like geeks, have acquired negative reputations thanks to popular media. Both, however, have important roles in the environment. In 2010, for example, there was a rare freeze in South Florida. Thousands of dead fish and a deadly smell almost eliminated the pleasures of walking the Anhinga Trail. Within a couple days, though, the vultures, with a little help from the gators, totally removed all the carrion. Anthropologists explain that the geek’s chief contribution to the social environment is to enable people with no discernable achievements to feel superior nonetheless.

   There are two more big black birds that are common in the Everglades--the cormorant and the anhinga. They have several similarities in appearance and behavior that make it difficult for non-geeks to tell them apart.
   Let us turn first to bird that lends its name to the Anhinga Trail. It swims underwater to spear fish with its pointed beak. The fish is typically removed by whacking it against the tree where the anhinga is perched. Sometimes it takes a lot of whacking. The fish is swallowed head first to keep its spines from cutting the anhinga’s throat on the way down.

The anhinga stabs its prey. This is a female, identifiable by her 

gray-buff neck and breast.

Anhinga chicks, as large as mother before they fledge, can be 

quite insistent at meal time.

During breeding season, the male's eye turns bright blue.

      Anhinga feathers are not coated with oil like most waterfowl. This makes it easier for the bird to stay submerged while fishing but it also means that the anhinga must dry its wings by spreading them in the sunshine.

   Virtually all of that is also true of cormorants except they catch fish with their hooked beaks instead of spearing them. Sometimes cormorants carry their fish right into a crowd of tourists on the boardwalk to keep the great blue herons from stealing them.

Note the hook with which the cormorant grasps prey rather 

than stabbing it like the anhinga.

Great blues are among the most impressive birds in the park. Or anywhere else for that matter. You may have seen them fishing in local waters. Or, like us, you may have had a heron steal the fish out of your backyard water garden. The great blue’s motto is, “Why should I waste time catching my own fish if I can just take yours?” 

 

This pair of great blues were doing their mating dance 

on Feb. 14. Really. Valentine's Day.

      Other herons we see regularly in the Everglades are the little blue, little green, tri-colored, and black crowned night heron. Then there are the storks, great white egrets, ibises both white and glossy, roseate spoonbills, and stilts. Unless you are afflicted with SBS, all can be fascinating to watch while they are fishing. A hovering osprey that plunges into the water to seize a fish is also pretty dramatic.

White ibis

The glossy ibis is described as deep purple. Looks black to me.

The little green heron perches on branches overhanging 

the water. He just leans over to stab small fish.

Great white egret

That's a walking catfish, by the way.

The snowy egret is recognized by her "golden slippers."

Little blue heron

Osprey on lookout for lunch.

Those nestlings eat like horses.

Black crowned night heron

Sometimes there are grebes in the No Little Hole.

We thought this turtle was struggling to get up a small hill,

Turns out she was digging a hole to lay eggs.

Only a close friend of the wood stork's mother would say

"Oh, what a beautiful baby!"

Adult storks are not what you would call beautiful either.

They have a great personality but their friends the ibises 

still have a hard time setting them up on a blind date.

But they do look graceful in flight. Almost attractive if high enough.

The roseate spoonbill may be the Jimmie Durante of birds but

somehow manages to seem fascinating regardless.

The bittern can be hard to see even when you are looking directly 

at him. 

   And we won’t even go into the varieties of turtles and snakes. Except to mention that one year we heard that there was a big rattlesnake taking a nap right in the Gumbo-Limbo Trail. “But don’t worry, the rangers have it roped off.” How in the world, I wondered, do you rope off a rattlesnake? It turns out the rangers had stretched some yellow plastic tape across the trail to keep visitors from getting too close. The snake didn’t seem to mind how close we got and just continued napping in a patch of sunshine.
   When you are afflicted with SBS, the best place to go is out a short spur trail to what Shirley and I call the Wisconsin Hole. (There is no official name.) There can be up to three dozen gators sunning themselves there and, in mating season, they may be roaring or bellowing. The deep rumble makes the water dance on their backs.

Gators tend to gather at the Wisconsin Hole;

When gators bellow in mating season or to protect their

territory, the water dances on their backs.

The result of mating season, of course, is a

lot of baby gators.

   Ranger Myrta had a class of environmental science students from UW who had “volunteered” to clear away non-native reeds that were encroaching on the hole. The kids were in there with machetes while Myrta stood watch at the edge of the water with a ten-foot pole. The gators, meanwhile, were lined up shoulder to shoulder with their jaws resting on the shore. Whenever a gator stood up to take a step forward, Myrta reached out and bonked it on the snout. The UW students tried hard to keep their minds on their work instead of on the gators. It can be challenging to wield a razor-sharp machete with your right hand while looking over your left shoulder. We admired their selfless dedication to the environment. That’s why, in their honor, we call it The Wisconsin Hole.
   On the opposite side of the loop trail is another spur that goes out to what we call the No Little Hole. In January and February this is a good place to see those purple Gallianos, little blue herons, little green herons, snowy egrets with golden feet, and perhaps even a bittern. The natural camouflage of the latter makes it virtually invisible even if you don’t have SBS. Most of all, though, we look forward to seeing the little piebald grebes.

   By the end of March, though, nesting season is wrapping up for many of the marsh birds. Still, we'd walk out there just in case. "No little grebes again today," said Shirley, "and no little greenies or little blues either." That's why we started referring to it as the No Little Hole.

   We have walked the Anhinga Trail hundreds of times (no, truly) since our first visit in the '80s. You might think the same old, same old would get boring after a while. In our experience, though, once you get over your initial case of SBS, every day there is just a walk in the park.