Dispatch from the Gator Nation

Oh no, not one of these things again!

No school is more deeply, obsessively into its mascot than the University of Florida. There's a late-night bus service called Later Gator. The webpage that tracks buses to and from campus is called Gator Locator. The university's day care center is called Baby Gator. The secure, online system faculty members use to submit grades every semester is called—wait for it—Grade-A-Gator. I'm not making this up.

And yet, it was still surprising to find that there are, indeed, real alligators slithering their way around the town's periphery in large numbers. After a morning of birding my favorite weekend spots (Palm Point and Powers Park), I dropped by La Chua Trail, on the north end of Paynes Prairie, to look for any winter sparrows that may have started wandering in. I got a few Song Sparrows, several Palm Warblers, and an enticing little sparrow-like bird I couldn't ID. There was also a female Northern Harrier, and a nice assortment of waders. But the most noticeably numerous creatures there were the gators.

There were really big guys, like the one above, as well as oddly proportioned babies:



In Alachua Sink, about a dozen of them were basking on a mudflat. Here are a few of them:



All along the trail, there are big, ominous signs warning people to keep a safe distance from the gators, and to be sure to be off the trail by dusk, when the gators start to feed. IF IT MOVES IT"S FOOD! one of them practically screamed. Oddly, the local birds (all of whom seemed to be moving) didn't seem terribly concerned: the gators on the mudflat were surrounded by a large flock of Least Sandpipers foraging calmly away; and everywhere else on the trail, Little Blue Herons, Common Moorhens, and White Ibises were resting or hunting only feet away from basking gators. The Cattle Egrets below are clearly not worried about getting eaten:



There was also a large variety of butterflies on the trail, which made me realize I should get a guidebook and learn more about them. This was one I hadn't seen before:



As I walked back to the trailhead, a couple with several young children passed and asked where the alligators were. I told them to it wasn't very far, and they wouldn't have to look very hard. And I was out of there long before sunset.

Snapshots from Home

I'm still on the e-mail list for Orange County Birding (that's Orange County, California, not Florida), and apparently, fall migration out there has been just as lively as it's been here. Yesterday, Glenn went to Peters Canyon Regional Park in search of the Bald Eagle that's been on everyone's To See list as of late—he missed it by about 10 minutes (as he learned from a photographer who had just been shooting it), but he did get one of his long-time grail birds: a Cactus Wren. More precisely, TWO Cactus Wrens, both of whom were happy to pose cooperatively for him.

This is a bird I've never seen myself, and a new bird for Glenn. Thus, it's an even better treat than a Bald Eagle.

This, and all the other cool sightings back there (Black-billed Cuckoo?! Holy freaking crap!) were starting to make me homesick. I miss the marsh at San Joaquin. And poking through the (mosquito- and water-moccasin-free) brush at Huntington Central Park, looking for wayward migrants. And comparing sightings with the other birders who frequent these areas.

But...if I were there, I wouldn't be getting all the good stuff here. Like the pelagics that hang out at Newnans Lake after big storms. And the companionship of a friendly and fantastically knowledgeable birding community. And treats such the 12 (that's right, TWELVE!) warblers I got this morning at Palm Point and Powers Park—and those were just the ones we could ID definitively. I wouldn't have missed this for the world.

When I was a kid, I imagined that by the year 2000, we'd all travel either by jet packs (for short commutes), or by teleportation, à la Star Trek (for longer distances). Pretty much every other kid I knew believed this as well, and our teachers and parents did nothing to disabuse us of this idea. Maybe they too thought we'd be able to pull it off.

And if we had, I'd be able to bird the Gainesville hot spot of my choice from sunrise until, say 11; hop into a wormhole shooting me directly to Bolsa Chica or Huntington Central, where I'd bird with Glenn from 8 (Pacific Time) to noon, have a nice lunch, then pop back to Gainesville in time for a shower and a few light errands before dinner. Or maybe even some sunset birding! How cool would that be?

But NOOO..instead, we' ve squandered our considerable energy and creativity on [insert name of your least favorite military expedition/public works project/time-wasting pop culture obsession here].

So my dream day of bicoastal migrant chasing probably won't happen in my lifetime. Drat.

Life can be fun, but sometimes, it's just not fair.