Everglades
National Park*, Ten Thousand Island region.
Paddling partner, Page, in the bow.
First night out, December 21, Sunday Bay Chickee: a roofed camping
platform tucked well out of the way behind an island wall of red mangrove, the
aquatic trees moored by the arced and intermeshed pilings of their own amphibious
proproots. To paddlers from the Georgia
Piedmont, the mangroves appear alien and a little shifty. They look like they could pull up stakes one
new-moon night and spider-walk across the low-tide water to a destination more
to their liking.
While
we unload the canoe about 300 Blue-winged Teal
flare away from the now tenanted
chickee, the visual marvel and precision movement of their fast-wheeling turn seemingly
the instant will of a single-minded grace.
A pair of Ospreys, the lead bird clutching a small fish still wet and
wriggling, fly directly overhead as Page snoozes in the subtropical sun. Short strings of wading birds and ducks solo
or by the brace—their flight a fast arrowing—pass low in front of our
stilt-legged shelter at dusk.
December’s full moon and winter solstice
fall on the same day, a gift of happenstance we have been looking forward to
for weeks. The light rapidly swaps
cardinal points as the descending sun’s counterweight raises the moon. The temperature sinks with the sun as the solstice
moon sits fat and fiery orange on the flat horizon. The full moon rises higher and clears the low
woods. The year’s longest night is now
lit and alive with moonshine and shimmer.
The reflection of its second-hand light spools out a long, linear glint
atop the water, a single lane of barely quivering yellow glimmer in the slight
breeze. Fish jump through the glimmer into
the moonlight. Their hidden lives become
visible for a second or two before they land in the lane, producing a special
effect of ripple-rings of liquid light rolling into ripple-rings of liquid light.
We measure out the night’s wee dram and
toast an ailing friend. Shortly after we
sipped the last of our therapeutic ground softener, I saw a large dark shape on
the water in the partial shade of the forest.
I pointed my paddle and told Page to look, but it had disappeared. Then she spotted the same silhouette, big and
dark and stationary, further out in the water but still in mangrove shade. We strained aging eyes to make out more than
black bulk at that distance.
We waited for no longer than fifteen
seconds. Whatever it was flew low to the
water closer to the chickee, wings all of a sudden huge and glowing ghostly
pale in the slanted moonlight, then dove with an audible splash. Definitely a big bird. It floated on the water again, still not
enough color to make a positive identification.
There was really only one species the bird could be, but we wanted to
see more before making the call. After a
slow ten count the waterbird winged low to the surface again and dove closer
still: a Brown Pelican hunting fish with a built-in net under the full moon’s
spotlight. Now sitting close and backlit,
the pelican’s pouched bill looked even larger and more primitive at night, like
a petroglyph flown from its rock roost back to the Pleistocene.
The next morning we launched to mild wind
and fair weather for our half-day paddle to Sweetwater Chickee, second-night’s
shelter tucked away at a mile’s remove from the main drag of the Wilderness
Waterway. Along the way, we angled
toward the backwater cove we had seen the teal fly into the afternoon
before. They were all still there,
loafing in the aquatic vegetation along with a small number of Lesser Scaup and
a few Ring-necked Ducks. Later in the
morning a living cloud of Tree Swallows crossed the far end of Huston Bay,
their closely knit mass darkening the sky.
The shape-shifting flock wheeled and tacked in accordion
fashion—bunching up dense and dark, then trailing out longer and lighter. The flock contained an uncountable blizzard
of these passerines, a pale reminiscence of the old days perhaps, but still an exciting
spectacle of abundance to us.
A
few minutes later the mega-flock descended, spread out low over the bay and flew
our way on a foraging run. The air was
now aswirl with the curving flight of acrobatic swallows, dipping and gliding,
scissoring and scything as they skimmed over the water. They paid us no more mind than to miss our canoe,
which became a swallow-splitting wedge parting a wild flurry of wings. At first we couldn’t make sense of the soft
clicks we were hearing. But then we
realized those clicks were the sounds of living bug zappers, beaks snapping up
insects out of the warm air.
Most
of the day’s route led through the big water of bays, where we were guided by
numbered markers for the Wilderness Waterway, the park’s 100-mile paddlecraft trail*
from Everglades City to Flamingo. Through
all three bays—Oyster, Huston, Last Huston—nearly every marker was crowned with
a Royal Tern, making the signs much easier to spot at a distance. The winter plumage on their orange-billed
heads reminded us of some old men. Their
black, breeding-season cap recedes during the fall, making them look like they
have gone bald except on the backs of their noggins, where they let the
remaining black grow into a shaggy tuft.
The next
day’s advance was short and made easier by a following wind. Once we reached Chevelier Bay and its
markers, all we had to do was travel from tern to tern—tern number 97, tern
number 95—all the way into the big islands beside our reserved camp. Beyond tern number 93 we glided past several Osprey
nests, strong cradles of crisscrossed sticks exposed to all weathers.
We arrived at Darwins Place, the former
hideout of a hermit, after noon and well before the current occupants—a group
of kayakers ferried from one good place to paddle to the next by their guide’s
motorboat—had vacated the small, dry-land campsite. They hadn’t even started breaking camp
yet. A hangover of wine bottles spilled
out of their screened-in gazebo. But
since we were in no hurry to go anywhere or start lugging water and gear, we
opted for patience, good cheer, and a long lunch.
Our decision was fortuitous. Noticing that Page remained harnessed to her
binoculars, the black-bearded guide repaid our patience with a tip before the
group finally left. “Head further down
this side of the bay, tuck your canoe in the mangroves just outside the
entrance to the creek before dusk, and watch the show.” “What show?” we asked. “The waders-going-to-roost show, remote but
no dish. Enjoy the rest of your trip.” Funny guy.
We
did as he instructed. After supper we glided
across glass-calm water to Cannon Bay’s southwestern corner and Gopher Key
Creek, the stream we were planning to explore on our layover day starting the
following morning. We tied our painters
to proproots just outside the creek’s mouth.
Ate another dessert and waited.
Cued by approaching dusk, the show began with a mixed bag of small
waders—Little Blue Heron, Tricolored Heron, Snowy Egret—flying hard and fast
right down the pipe of the creek’s mangrove tunnel. They exited the protected part of their roost-flight
right in front of us at nearly eye level.
After several more of these mixed flocks of twelve to thirty birds
barreled by, the first White Ibis-only line rolled up and over the red
mangroves bordering the other side of Gopher Key’s narrow mouth. The show was on, gawk and awe, another gift
of happenstance. Flock after flock of
waders followed the same invisible groove over the mangroves or surged out of
the creek’s mouth.
The creek crooks to the left for the fliers
immediately before it opens to the bay.
The small waders slowed slightly as they banked high into the curve
before making a gravity-whipped dive that pitched them out of the creek low and
fast. Flocks of ten to twenty golden-slippered
Snowy Egrets summoned involuntary murmurs of appreciation as they passed in
review trailing their reflections. Their
startling bursts of bright white were luminous against the darkening mangrove
and glade water. Their witching-hour
white was so intense, so seemingly glowing with their own incandescence, that a
few lumens of earlier light must have disobeyed the bounds of physics to catch
a joyride on their feathers.
The ibis flowed in a broken stream of dots
of five to dashes of fifty. Tall
mangrove lined the other side of the creek’s entrance. String after string of ibis in single-file
formation hurdled the last and tallest rank of mangroves in a fluid curl, a
living rollercoaster arcing up and over the obstacle with unerring spacing and grace. We watched as they flapped their white and
wavering flight lines toward the green mangrove-island roost. Through binoculars, the alligator-guarded roost
bloomed white with wading birds a mile away—the mangroves suddenly turned into
aquatic magnolias—in the upper half of the bay.
The incoming tide of ibis, egret, and herons
ebbed as a darker shade of dusk filled the creek’s mouth. I finally convinced Page that we should show
the same good sense as the birds and head back to our camp before the large
islands became black walls indistinguishable from the real shoreline. That night Barred Owls made loud and
persistent queries into each other’s cooking arrangements* while a solitary Eastern
Screech Owl claimed the high land of Darwins Place with his long, quavering whistles.
The next morning we finished our oatmeal mush
just after sunrise, then launched our nearly empty canoe into the still-shaded
water of the narrow channel between camp and the island hiding the landing from
the rest of the bay. Less than 75 yards
into Gopher Key Creek, Page spotted a Green Heron, our first wader of the
day. We would see Green Herons standing
low beside the water, hunting, the rest of the day. While we remained in the narrow part of the
creek, each of the shy waders strode slow, deliberate steps up the arching proproots
before tucking further away behind an evergreen shield of mangrove leaves. We passed our next big bird—light brown and
chunky and stolidly still, an immature Black-crowned Night-Heron—less than 50
yards past the green. Page and I would
spot immature night-herons the rest of the day too, one or more in almost every
sweeping glance at the wooded banks.
Near the entrance of the first lake, a Great
Blue Heron hunted with stiff and deliberate poise, dagger-shaped head cocked
with predatory intent. We angled away
from the tall and stilt-legged heron so we wouldn’t spook it. But it tensed, turned away from the water’s
edge, then lifted off in slow-flapping flight.
Once airborne and out of reach of retribution, the great blue broadcast
its umbrage with several loud curses, retched up guttural and grating from deep
in its long gullet.
The steadily widening tidal stream—its
current a slow pendulum swinging back and forth to the moon’s stringless puppeteering—links
a chain of small unnamed lakes and three larger bodies of water, invariably
called bays in the Everglades. Each lake
and bay held a bonanza of large birds, including the waders the creek had
disgorged the evening before, several basking alligators, and a seemingly
limitless supply of leaping fish. We glassed
an aggregation of over fifty Pied-billed Grebes in the first small lake, by far
the largest grouping of this species we had ever seen before. Double-crested Cormorants dove in the deeper
water; Brown Pelicans loafed atop low, densely branched trees; Belted Kingfishers
ratcheted from perch to perch.
A Great Egret skimmed low over a wide run of
creek, flying with the body double of its own reflection. Its morning-light and calm-water wings beat
in rhythmic unison with its bone and feather ones. Each downstroke pulled the ghost wings up in
reverse puppetry. Each downstroke
conjured a somewhat flattened, eye-shaped loop, the two perfect egrets aligned
north and south, the snow-white wing tips touching for an instant east and
west. Each wingbeat created everyday
water magic flawless in every movement. Water
has more than three forms; water can change into egrets flying double white
across a netherworld of forested sky.
In Gopher Key Bay we spotted several more Red-shouldered
Hawks perch-hunting the ecotone along the shoreline. With raptors now more in mind, we increased
our lookout for a Short-tailed Hawk. On
previous trips to the glades we had spotted a grand total of two—one each of
both color morphs, dark and light—both circling low and lazily over a mangrove
island.
White
Ibis industriously probed the shallows as they noodled the underwater muck with
their long, curved bills. Wood Storks
waded the low-tide water, hiding their fleshy pink feet as usual. The built-for-bludgeoning form of the stork’s
outsized bill belies its function: a pair of exquisitely sensitive,
spring-loaded chopsticks. Our binoculars
tracked the steady drift of another mature Bald Eagle high above, the
white-headed raptor coasting to the northeast without effort on wide wings set
straight out and still—statuary flown free from pedestal and gravity’s press.
We entered Rookery Bay, our last one, just
before a late lunch. A big Cooper’s Hawk,
a female, busted across a small corner of a cove, her movements muscular and
overtly aggressive on the hunt. High overhead
a short diagonal formation of American White Pelicans rose in sweeping circles,
riding on the soft pillow of a thermal, wings flat as milled planks. Their glider-wide, black-and-white wings shone
with brilliant clarity against the sky’s deep, photogenic blue. Page and I stopped paddling and watched as
the pelicans flew with surprising elegance for such huge birds that appear
head-heavy and ungainly on land. The
white line of pelicans climbed up an invisible spiral staircase, their ascent
an effortless rising against gravity, the skyward wind made visible by the
graceful soaring of birds.
We slowly worked our way across the narrow end
of Rookery, frequently stopping to focus on a soon-to-disappear mud flat. Gulls and terns congregated on one side of
the flat, shorebirds the other. At our
considerable distance, we were able to identify only Laughing Gulls and Greater
Yellowlegs. While we scanned the flat,
an Osprey hovered, folded the nearly 6-foot reach of its wings tight against
its flanks, and dove twice in quick succession, coming up empty on both attempts.
Eventually we entered the much wider and
shallower side of the bay, its far southern shore opening to view nearly a half
mile away. Five white pelicans were
moored in the southeastern corner. The
uncanny distortion of size in a flat landscape, the illusion that turns distant
house cats into cougars, made them look nearly as large as small sailboats.
Our explorations ended at the furthest reach
of the bay, a little less than a mile from the gulf and 45 yards from a half dozen
Roseate Spoonbills: highly anticipated ornithological oddities with their pink
plumages and spatulate bills. Flamboyantly
colored birds of memorable beauty, the essentially tropical spoonbills always
quicken our spirits after the long drive from winter-drab Georgia.
The short day turned us around from Rookery
toward a steady pace back to camp. Late
that afternoon, while we ate supper close beside the brackish water, three bottlenose
dolphins streaked through the narrow channel in front of Darwins Place. They didn’t arch and roll in single file like
we had witnessed many times before in bay and gulf and ocean. These three swam with power and sleek speed
side by side just below the surface: a fast, straight-line surging like three
short, chunky torpedoes. Their slanted
foreheads pillowed up impressive wakes as they sped by in tight formation.
After
finishing our supper in the last of the good light, we returned to watch a rerun
of yesterday’s show, the after-dinner theater end to our best-ever day birding
afloat in the field. That evening, which
we belatedly realized was Christmas Eve, we toasted the good fortune of our day.
Notes
While
this essay is written in travelogue style, it is definitely not a guide to
where and how and when to find birds in Everglades National Park. This is a story about serendipity, one
perfect twenty-four-hour day of great good luck. The guide gave us a tip, a gift of his local
knowledge. The next morning we paddled
into a perfect day: perfect solitude, perfect wildness, perfect weather—warm,
sun-bright, scarcely a breath of wind—a day surrounded by birds in the water,
birds in the sky overhead, birds on the low-tide banks and mud flats, birds in
the mangroves.
The very next year, only a few days later in
December, we attempted to duplicate our day of magic. Sunday Bay Chickee had been abandoned and
replaced with another shelter in a decidedly inferior location. The going-to-roost show wasn’t the same. More ibis curled over the mangrove rim than
the year before, but far fewer small herons shot out of Gopher Key Creek’s
mouth, and no incandescent Snowy Egrets at all.
They had already found another roost.
The weather had already become overcast and
windy as we entered the two-way creek early the next morning. While we did see more Roseate Spoonbills
blown about like large strips of colorful confetti, overall, we spotted far
fewer numbers and species of birds than on that one incredible day the year
before.
A few years later, in February, we camped
three nights at Darwins Place, pinned down by a relentless white-capping
wind. No going-to-roost show, no
paddling out to remote and birdy Rookery Bay.
It was then, while we were wind-bound and bored at Darwins Place, that
we fully appreciated the rarity of that one glorious and golden day. On that day we had been drawn into the flight
lines and lives of birds, immersed in the joy and grace, beauty and abundance
of birds in the big country of a wild landscape.
Though
yesteryear’s sky-filling numbers seem almost mythological by today’s diminished
baselines, birds remain the special glory of the Everglades.
*At
1,509,000 acres, Everglades is by far the largest national park in the eastern
U.S. A significant amount of this
impressive acreage is out in the open waters of Florida Bay and the Gulf of
Mexico.
*Motorboats
are also allowed on the Everglades’ waterways.
*The
Barred Owl’s signature series of eight loud hoots—two groups of four, rhythmic
and emphatic—is usually translated into English as a culinary question: who
cooks for you, who cooks for you-all? In
owl-English the distinctive sounds become hoohoo-hoohoo-hoohoo-hoohooaw
