July 1, 2007 - Lovers Key

Ah, the fun hardly ever stops here.  Almost every day something new happens.  We either see some wildlife we'd not known we were living with, the beach changes configuration, the seagrape tree limbs hang lower as the grapes mature, or something.

Today was the first uncomfortable day from a weather standpoint that we've had so far this year.  (Dave has a short memory! . . . Barb.)  81 degrees at 6 AM and the humidity was also 81 %.  When we went out to do our turtle patrol and trash pickup, we knew it was warmer than usual.  If this is as bad as it gets, it'll be a piece of cake for us, but we'll find out.

This next section will be photos from others, mostly, and that's because our activities haven't really given us the chance to learn where to get these kinds of shots, nor do we want to be disturbing the birds.

On the left, a newly hatched Wilson's Plover, on the right, "Not Quite Twins", an even newer hatchling, this one a Least Tern.  The head is behind the recently emptied shell.

On the left, "Motherly Love", a Least Tern with her day old chick.  These three pictures were taken by our wonderful friend and naturalist Pamela Jones-Morton, PhD., commonly known as volunteer Pam.  She takes visitors on beach walks, wades into the mudflats with another tour, and is our resident expert on most everything that nobody else knows much about.  We've featured her here in the past and will be commenting on her again I'm sure.  The names for the pictures are hers.

The picture on the right is of  a couple of Least Terns and was taken by Brie Jamison, our volunteer coordinator and park services specialist.  Brie has a knack for being in the right place at the right time when it comes to wildlife.  While she spends much of her time tied to a desk, it's really the outdoors part of her job she seems to enjoy most.

This series is the result of Barb's effort at "cleaning up" one of the RV sites.  Well, actually, it's only a partial show of the whole effort.  Let me explain.

As one of our "summer duties," we're responsible for maintaining the "RV Village" which consists of the six sites used by the volunteers during the season (October through April) in exchange for the various duties assigned.  During the season we are obligated to work 32 hours per week per site, during the off season (now) the obligation drops to 24 hours per week per site.

Well, the fun part of the maintenance is that I get to ride the mower around, being careful to not snag a low hanging branch with the roll-bar.  When that happens, the front of the mower comes up quickly and will roll the mower over backwards.  Don't ask me how I know this.  Let's just say that some things are best learned by observing others and some things are best remembered by personal experience.  Neither the ranger who showed me what could happen nor my personal experience has resulted in the mower actually flopping on its back, but we've both been frightened by how quickly that can happen.

While I'm bouncing around on the mower making clouds of dust, Barb will busy herself pitching coconuts.  The pile you see here numbered 400+.  It's the third pile she's hauled out of the tangle of downed palm fronds, sea grape leaves, Virginia Creeper vines, tall grass, and to her regret, poison ivy vines.  In some cases the coconuts have been three and four deep (likely the result of several years of hurricanes).  It's our hope that by clearing out the brush and all these coconuts and mowing regularly, the volunteers who stay in this site will be able to enjoy a shady picnic area or, at the very least, have a more pleasant site.  Another benefit to having the clean-up happen is that there are fewer places for the no-see-ums to live.  They like leaf litter.  One down, four to go (the others aren't so bad). 

You're right.  There are six sites, and this is the first one Barb's cleaned out, so how do I come up with the "...four to go."?  We've already cleaned up our site, that's how!

As you know, Barb's a member of the Bonita Beach Shell Club and occasionally will bring home pictures of what's going on there every Thursday morning.  In this case, one of the members brought in examples of flowers she'd made, some of which were incredibly delicate and small.

On Saturday and Sunday mornings, we join a ranger to do the "turtle patrol."  Every morning at 6:30, the beaches are patrolled looking for turtle crawls and, hopefully, a nest.  We are only responsible for the weekends, but we've been known to do it in conjunction with other activities that I'll talk about later.

On this particular patrol, we picked up some shell egg casings.  There are four different shell casings, three represent different kinds of shells.  The curls are from Lightening Whelks (the size reflects the size of the "mother" shell from which it came), don't know the odd little one attached to the large whelk case, and the larger ball shaped one is from a horse conch.  What made this particularly interesting were those green "things" (looked like a bunch of grapes on the shoreline) that I thought might be some kind of fish eggs that had washed up on the beach.

Here's a better shot of the "eggs".  We asked all the staff we could find what they were, nobody knew.  That called for sending the pictures to Pam because she knows everything about anything connected to Lovers Key wildlife.  Only this time she admitted she was as clueless as the rest of us.  Whew!  She's human after all! (Just kidding, Pam.)  BUT!  Pam knows people.  And some of those people know more stuff, so she sent the picture and descriptions around to see what we could learn.  And guess what!  These are one of the major sources of nutrition for migrating shore birds in New Jersey.  And other beaches as well.  They're the eggs from the Horseshoe Crab.  Who's not really a crab at all, of course.  And I could go on and on with all that we learned about the egg laying process, but if you're reading this then you've got access to Google and other search engines and you can learn all you want that way.

And then the very next day (Sunday), we found a crawl and Sonya and Barb did lots of digging..... and digging ....to no avail.

But Sonya had found what we all thought was an egg shell, and from the little slices I was pretty sure it was the result of a raccoon finding the nest.  Barb smiled for the camera and maybe Sonya would have too, but digging in the sand when you're not sure there's a nest must have taken some of her smile away.

Ranger Mike later confirmed that in fact a raccoon had in all probability eaten the egg and later he went out and found the nest.  So, we had the chance to find a nest ourselves, but blew it.  RATS!  Maybe next time.

These pretty flowers are on what's called a Railroad Vine (part of the Morning Glory family).  Typically, these vines will grow straight as a railroad across the sand, helping to establish dunes.  It's obviously fairly early in the morning, because these delicate flowers will be folded up by mid-day when it gets hot.

Presseller's Delicatessen is located in Punta Gorda.  About half way between Ft. Myers Beach and Sarasota.  And that's where we met Ric and Carol for lunch.  And what a great time we had!  Several months ago, I got a call from Ric who'd seen our ad for the motorhome.  One thing led to another, and they bought a newer one closer to their home in southern California.  But in the process, we struck up a friendship because I knew a little about Foretravels (the brand of our motorhome), and he knows a whole lot about photography.  There's lots more, of course, but suffice to say that when Ric and Carol came to visit his mom in Sarasota, they were kind enough to set aside some time for lunch with us.  We could have talked all day, but all of us had other things to do, so for now we're still doing the e-mail thing.  They have room on their property for us to visit, and it's on our "gottado" list.  Still got lots to talk about that didn't get covered during our three-hour lunch.

Ranger Mike had made arrangements for the staff and volunteers (those few of us still here) to take a tour of the Mound House in Ft. Myers Beach.  Theresa is the person giving us the tour and is pretty much the person who does most everything else associated with the Mound House (professionally, she's an archeologist).  She's been responsible for government grants, community involvement, and all the "background" stuff that's needed for an ancient archeologically interesting site to be excavated appropriately and opened to the public.

Left to right is Bob Slifka and his wife, volunteers who live nearby.  Then Ranger Amy, me, Ranger Randy, and our newest volunteer, Dave.  Barely in the picture is Sonya, one of a couple of part-time rangers.

That beautiful tree with the huge trunk is a strangler fig!  It's the largest we've ever seen and, from the pictures of the Mound House dating way back, we know the tree is well over 100 years old.

Some people who'd happened to ride in on their bikes were just in time for the tour and one of them took this picture of Barb and me so you could get a perspective of how large that tree really is.

During her presentation, Theresa told us about how the Calusa people used the available materials for tools, weapons, and art work.  You see, this mound had been built of discarded shells (and some brought in just to build the mound) over many years by the Calusa, and at one time was apparently the home site for some of the leaders of the group.  When the Cubans came to set up fish camps, this was a favorite home site as well.  The house that is here now was started back in 1904 and has been enlarged and improved off and on ever since.

Some of the carvings done by a student of Theresa's using the shell tools used by the Calusas.

A quick demonstration of the throwing stick, and then we got to try it.  The "arrow" had no point, thus somewhat less dangerous for us neophytes.  The stick was interesting, and quite different in configuration from the ones we'd seen in the Southwest.  There was a hole for inserting a finger, presumably to keep the throwing stick from being inadvertently thrown!

You can see the arrow just above the palm tree in the background (pointing up, feathers on the bottom), mine is nowhere to be seen.  And it's not because it fell at my feet!  Maybe it's that little spec up there, eh?  I actually had a pretty good throw, if I do say so myself.

An example of the Poinciana tree with its brilliant red flowers, then the entrance to an excavation of the mound.  The swimming pool was useless, so Theresa got permission to use the area where it used to be as a demonstration area to show the layers of shells as they were brought in.  This mound is quiet extensive, and in the past was even more so.  The existing mound is probably less than 25% of what they think it was at its highest.  All that "ground" we're standing on is shells.  No dirt at all, and very little sand.

We've gone into what was the swimming pool, more or less.  The roof overhead is new of course and you can see the square "holes"  (archeological digs) that have been dug in an attempt to understand more about what went on here.

These two shots are of the same place, one with and one without the flash, just so you can see some of the shells that make up the walls of where we are.

We applaud the efforts of this young woman and her extensive knowledge of the Calusa people, and wish her well on the ongoing effort to make the Mound House what it can be.

Yup, more of Barb's efforts at the shell club.  Amazes me what people see when they look at shells.  I see a seashell.  Period.  But somebody saw a poodle, and Barb made the one on the left.  There's more pictures of her skills coming up, so stay tuned.

I'll close this page with a couple of tranquil shots of the sunset one evening.  Lovers Key is truly a beautiful place.

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