Winged Garden Visitors

One of the wonderful birds that I often see in The Garden is the Anhinga. Often called the Snake-bird because of its propensity to swim with only its long neck and head above water, it is also know as Water Turkey, Darter, or American Darter.

The Anhinga resembles the Double-Crested Cormorant. I tell them apart by looking at their bills. The bill of the Anhinga is straight and pointed (like the letter A) and the bill of the Cormorant has a hooked top (like the letter C)!

The wings of both of these birds do not contain oils. This makes it easier for them to dive and retrieve their underwater prey. I often see them sitting with their wings unfurled as they dry them out in our hot Florida sun.

If you have a photo of a favorite bird, send it to me. I will post the best ones on my next blog!

For the Birds

Over the past few months there has been a flurry of activity here within the developing gardens, providing us with a changing landscape nearly every day. The view from the James and Linda White Birding Tower is also going through a transformation and growing right along with your gardens. As the dry season continues and water draws down in the Collier Enterprises South Wetlands Preserve, we have been busy cutting down and stacking dead melaleuca trees. It has been nearly two years now since we began treating the exotic invaders and many of the understory plants have re-colonized their former habitat. The area has traditionally been an open, spartina-dominated marsh with few scattered trees. By removing the dead invasive trees, we have opened up an additional 15 acres of viewshed and increased the available native marshland habitat for wildlife. In addition to opening up the area and allowing native plants to reclaim the land, stacking the melaleuca logs provides some structure for birds that use the wetlands. Warblers have already been seen using the stacks.

This past fall we also treated the cattails in the South Wetlands Preserve to allow the native spartina, sawgrass and rushes to reclaim its habitat. Though cattails are native to many areas of the United States, alteration of hydrology, nutrient loading in our wetlands, and species hybridization have caused them to spread as a monoculture through many areas, choking out other native habitat and wildlife. Over the past few years, the acreage of the South Wetland Preserve covered by cattail has slowly grown while the number of birds we have seen has slowly decreased. Since the treatment of the cattails, a visit to the tower provides you with a view of several species of wading birds and birds of prey. On a recent birding tour, we identified over 20 species, including pied-billed grebes, great blue herons, great egrets, tricolored herons, wood storks, ospreys, American kestrels, common moorhens, and a juvenile bald eagle. Each new day seems to bring more birds to the Preserve.

Treating invasive exotic species is rarely a one time occurrence and we will likely be battling against both melaleuca and cattails for the coming years. In the meantime, nature has repaid our efforts with the return of many species of birds to the Preserve. I am excited to see what the rest of this spring’s bird migration brings to us. If you have had a sighting of any exciting birds this year in Collier County, please leave us a comment so that we can begin watching for them here at your Garden!