Florida animals - Sulfur springs, shark fishing and hurricanes
Translated from pp. 153-177 of
Hanström, Bertil. 1936. Cape Cod Och Florida, Zoologiska Reseminnen.
Albert Bonniers Forlag, Stockholm. 219 pages.
By Diana Fihnn
University of Lund
Helsingborg, Sweden
Edited by Ernest D. Estevez
Mote Marine Laboratory
Sarasota, Florida
2003
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Just south of Venice lies at the beach of the Gulf of Mexico a little village called Englewood, close to Lemon Bay. A wealthy businessman from Chicago, Mr. John F. Bass Jr., has established a small but well equipped biological laboratory here for studies of the surrounding flora and fauna. Lemon Bay is one of the many elongated straits with brackish water, that lay along the southern coast of Florida, both east and west sides, and that are separated in the first case from the Atlantic and in the latter from the Gulf of Mexico by narrow spits, similar to those that are limiting "Haffen" in the southeast of the Baltic Sea (page 130). This series of spits, following the coastline of the peninsula and islands, has on the outside the most wonderful sand beaches in the world, where the seas roll in on shining white shell sands in an even flow of warm waves. Behind the beach grass, further up on the bank, stand magnificent cabbage palm trees and shrubbery of saw palmettos and lonely Opuntia. The inland shallow straits are on the other hand covered with mangroves in thick, sometimes impenetrable forests. The water is brownish from plant material but is still salty or brackish close by the river mouths. It's just this intimate combination of land and sea, of luxuriant vegetation and salt water and tropical climate that gives rise to a tremendously wealthy fauna that is far from completely explored.
Even the area’s inland fauna was impressive. In the bungalow where I settled with my family, small animals were swarming, in spite of the obligatory window screens. Lizards of the species Anolis carolinensis were climbing on the windows and on the ceiling, hunting flies and mosquitoes. In the bathroom little scorpions were running between the bricks and 5 cm long cockroaches were emerging at dusk to cadge [beg; eat] on the children’s crackers. The lizards were little energetic creatures that in a few seconds changed colors from dark brown to light green, depending on their mood and other circumstances. They were cheering their good luck in hunting with the numerous tree frogs of several species and changing colors, mostly green. They jumped unconcerned around on the windows thanks to their sticky toes and sometimes at night fell down in your bed like small soft and moist balls of slime.
The Laboratory area that is partly cultivated, partly overgrown with pine trees and saw-palmettos was also swarming with life. A horrible smell told you often in the mornings that the black and white skunk had been visiting. Moles ( Scalops aquaticus) and mice of different species were digging in the ground and the bird fauna was especially wealthy. Quails (Colinus virginianus) were whistling in the palmetto bushes all day. Dwarf pigeons (Columbigallina passerina) were sun bathing in the gravel by the road and the gray mockingbird sang in flowering agaves, with their candelabra lookalike flower arrangements, sometimes so confusingly similar to our Swedish nightingale that you could think you were home on an early summer’s day. The beautiful blue and white "Florida jay" (Aphelocoma coerulescens) with the same shape of a thrush, was so tame that it would snap bread out of your hand or sit down unconcerned on people’s heads; meanwhile, the ospreys were fishing the waters of Lemon Bay almost daily, just outside the windows of the zoologists’ workplace. But when the shining osprey had hovered over the water for a long time, did a nose dive and once again left the bay with a fish in its claws, it could very well happen that it had to leave its prey to a mightier hunter, the bald eagle (Haliaetus leucocephalus) that has not less than three nesting pairs in Englewood’s country (compare page 213-216). However, it was not only ospreys and eagles that were plundering the wealth in the water of Lemon Bay - whole flocks of herons, cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus floridanus) and pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) were also fishing there, and on the other side of the bay out over the Gulf you could even sometimes see the black frigate-bird (Fregata aquila or as it was later called a more magnificent name, Fregata magnificens rothschildi) sail around high up in the air. With its pointy long wings and deep split tail it makes a truly magnificent impression, but just like the bald eagle lives in part to plunder its relative the osprey’s prey, the frigate-birds often force gulls and sea swallows to hand over their hard-acquired prey.
To Lemon Bay’s nice inhabitants belongs the snapping shrimp (Alpheus) that makes a clicking noise with its funny shaped claw, and the big edible shrimp Penaeus, both of which have been captured in a few feet of water on a bottom covered by decomposing mangrove leaves. Here is also the equally delicious blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) that is playing a considerably bigger part throughout the east coast from Florida to Cape Cod, and one close relative, "the soft crab" that is only located in the south and which you eat cooked whole just when they shed their shells. On the walls of the boathouses is the climbing mangrove crab (Aratus pisoni) that is able to climb vertical wooden walls with its claws, that are sharp like needles and punctuate your skin if you let the crab climb on your hand.
Many turtles are close by Lemon Bay, both terrestrial and aquatic. The most original is the "gopher" Gopherus polyphemus that makes long burrows in sandbanks where it hides during the day. If it gets to live in peace it only builds one burrow that it uses during its whole lifetime. Often other guests are moving in, like rattlesnakes, rabbits (Lepus silvaticus, "the cotton tail"), Florida’s burrowing owl (Speotyto cunicularia floridana), frogs and several species of insects. The rabbits and the frogs are not likely to inhabit a gopher nest for a long time if it is simultaneously inhabited by a rattlesnake. Besides the different rattlesnake species (compare chapter 11) a mostly characteristic snake of Florida is "the black snake,” the shiny black Bascanion constrictor. It is very common and can be 3 m long but is very innocent and even good for farming because it's living on mice, rodents, locusts and crickets. It can seem surprising that so big a snake as Bascanion is satisfied with eating crickets but Florida’s crickets are not like others. When for the first time in a palm hammock I met the shining red-yellow Romalea microptera crawling in the dry grass I didn't know what to do with it. The body measured 10 cm in length, and with the pelvic legs stretched out it was nearly 15 cm and it refused to both jump and fly. The wings are reduced and its weight is probably too big to allow jumping. It probably takes a few of this often abundant insect to satisfy a black snake’s appetite. Linné gave the black snake the species name "constrictor" because it kills larger prey by wrapping around them and crushing them, just like a boa constrictor.
The beaches of the Gulf are swarming with coquinas, centimeter-long clams (Donax variabilis) with varying colors of white, blue, yellow or red. A handful of sand can host hundreds of coquina who despite their size are edible. Uncooked they taste like chanterelle but they are better as soup - even the Florida ducks eat them in huge quantities. Piles of dead coquina shells were used earlier to produce bricks and a lot of the old houses in St. Augustine are built of it. Of the sea fauna out in the Gulf you'll not see much from the beach, at the surface some porpoise, some shoals of small fishes, or once in a while a shark fin that warns against longer swims. But the fishing boats are landing both tarpons, saw-fishes and the beautiful spotted stingray Aëtobatus narinari that was named by the Swedish student Euphrasén, who described the fauna on our newly acquired tropical colony St. Barthélemy in the West Indies.
Florida biogeography is in many ways surprising. In San Casa by the road south of Englewood is a sturdy ditch dug to keep the water off the road during the rainy season. This shallow waterway showed during an investigation to contain a whole aquarium with contributions from every possible way. Despite the long way from Lemon Bay and the Gulf, the water is brackish and truly marine animals like blue crabs and some completely saltwater fishes are living here together with alligator-pikes of the species Cylindrosteus castelnaui, and little fishes of about 15 different species of the same kind that we in Europe usually hold in aquariums; for example Apomotis punctatus, Chaetobryttus gulosus, Zygonectes chrysotus, Chriopeops goodei and the mosquitofish Gambusia holbrookii. Gambusia has successfully been implanted in freshwater in different parts of the world to control the malaria mosquito Anopheles, as for example in 1930 at Istrien where this small fish effectively succeeded in limiting the spread of malaria. Despite the mosquito fishes, Anopheles is still widespread in Florida and you can't avoid getting stung, but since these mosquitoes are not infected by malaria parasites no special precautions are needed.
As we were visiting Florida during its best season, the insect and especially the butterfly fauna made a huge impression on this not-so-spoiled zoologist. The enormous swarms of huge dragonflies (the green and exclusive American Anax junius and light brown circumtropic Pantala flavescens) that were hunting over the grass glades and in the edges of the palm hammock; the enormous brown butterflies called monarchs, vice-kings, and queens ( page 206); the gayly-colored shining papilionacéerna (Papilio glaucus, P. ajax and P. cresphontes) with their swallow's tails and swift flight– all constituted worthy objects for an exciting insect hunt. Too, among all these exotic butterflies one finds old Swedish acquaintances in the shape of the thistle butterfly (Vanessa cardui) and the admiral (Pyrameis atalanta) which was not a surprise to the entomologist. The admirals here, however, have an opportunity to acquire nutrients that it is lacking in Sweden - you can see it in Florida as they fly from trunk to trunk that has been visited recently by the yellow bellied woodpecker Sphyrapicus varius; the admirals together with the woodpecker suck the sap that is issuing out from the holes that the bird made. Along branches of bigger plants I found, unusually for the season, some pairs of the decimeter long "walking stick" Anisomorpha buprestoides. The female is twice the size of the male that she was carrying on her back. Despite this doubling they could be pretty hard to detect since their imitation of a branch is almost perfect. When they are captured the female ejects a fluid with an odd smell from glands underneath the abdomen: for a man it's not so terrible but it's probably intended to be a repellent to other enemies. In a similar matter, the common Florida "bombardier beetle" is a beetle of the genus Brachynus that is represented by several species throughout the state. It is found for example under the bark of decomposing cabbage palm trees and when disturbed discharges a series of sharp shots caused by a gland secretion that explodes with a crack and a puff.
A few miles from Englewood is Salt Springs, a remarkable crater look-alike lake with sulfur-containing water. The road there is constituted only of a tire track through a monotonic dry wooden landscape with sparse pine trees and palmettos; at last even the pine trees disappear and the spiny palmettos are left there alone mixed with "sandspurs" whose very spiny fruits stubbornly stick to your clothes and skin. Suddenly the monotony is broken by a real oasis in the desert, a group of luxuriant cabbage palm trees and constantly green oaks, dressed with meter long plumes of Spanish moss that beautifully frame an almost completely circular lake with a little greenish, but still clear, water. Some small houses, not to say hovels, lay on one of the lake’s shores. Inside they serve simple meals to those who have been tempted to come to Salt Springs for its reputation as a health spring. Even though the lake stinks of hydrogen sulphide the water is used for drinking by a lot of Floridians and even more are bathing there. There is even a springboard to dive from and with a funny feeling you jump head-first into water of 30°C, salty and impregnated with hydrogen sulphide, but still in some way fresh and reviving, the degree depending on self suggestion or not. The numerous little fishes that are scared by the swimmers and scatter across the surface prove however that the water isn't lethal. There are also water turtles and alligator pikes; a real alligator had been seen swimming by the lake’s other side this same morning. Presently, some small islets floated by, of a beautiful Solanaceae that carries blue flowers and big red shining fruits. The plants are only halfway stuck in the bottom that in this lake is loose and muddy. In other places you can feel firm ground under your feet, Florida limestone, that also shows up in the surrounding scrub vegetation and makes it superficially reminiscent of Ölands pans.
Salt Springs has three inflows with hydrogen sulphide water. A stronger stream is leading the water out of there. Some thermal spring flow is in contact with the lake so the temperature in some places is up to 35°C. In one of the inflows we discovered a speckled moccasin snake (Agcistrodon piscivorus)-- after the diamond backed rattlesnake (page 184) it is the most poisonous of Florida's reptiles, but it didn't show itself ready to bite. The outflowing water was full of gray lumps, probably lumps of sulphur bacteria, and stank from a long way off because of the poisonous hydrogen sulphide. But in the water the little black and partly-colored mosquito fish Gambusia holbrookii was schooling. Dragonflies with violet bodies and black wings were flying over the water, and centimeter long light-green leaf frogs sat in lumps in the grass at the edges of the brook. Almost every small bush of "bayberries" (page 78) contained a wasp's nest, never bigger than a ping-pong ball. A gray owl sat quiet and still in one of the constantly green oaks, and over the palm hammock big black vultures were circulating.