In the southeast it marks the beginning of Fall. The American Robin (Turdus migratorius) is found throughout North America. They spend their spring and summer months in the northern states but as the winter temperatures approach, they migrate to the southern gulf states. This allows them to escape the summer heat which is extremely stressful to them.
The American Robin.
Photo: Kalyn Waters
Robins migrate due to the freezing temperatures which harden the ground making it difficult for them to access their main food source, the earthworm. As they migrate, they travel at about 30 to 36 m.p.h. covering anywhere from 100 to 200 miles per day. To navigate their way during migration robins use the angle of the sun in relations to the time of day, this is why they travel during the day.
While robins are excellent migrators, only about 25% of all fledglings will survive the migration, and several adults will fall victim as well.
The head and tail feathers of the male robin are very dark with brighter orange when compared to the females. In the spring the males will migrate back to cooler climates before the females. This has to due with the roles they play in raising their young. The male’s job is to find the best territory and defend it. While the females build the nest, lay, and incubate the eggs. The female has no rush to return so she will wait until the thaw has come. If she returns to early to start building, a frost can damage the strength of her nest, which is built from mud.
While robins typically nest in the exact same location every spring in the north, they typically wander in the winter months to different locations from year to year. As our fall temperatures continue to bring a chill, be on the look out for the American Robins as we welcome them to the south this fall. And while they are likely not the same birds we had last fall, they have made their 1000 + mile journey to enjoy our mild winter.
Over the last few weeks, I have received several questions and comments on, and about, the eastern indigo snake. I was curious as to why so many in such a short time – maybe a public television program on them or something? Not sure, but it is an amazing snake and I like to talk about them. So, let’s talk about them.
The eastern indigo (Drymarchon couperi) is the longest native snake found in North America. It reaches a length of 9 feet and can weigh up to 11 pounds. It is beautiful. A shiny, iridescent black, with smooth scales that give a glossy look and emits beautiful patterns of color when the sun reflects off it that resembles the sheen you see when gasoline is spilled on water. This beautiful coloration, being nonvenomous, and docile attitude made it very popular as a pet – except that it can reach up to 9 feet long.
The eastern indigo snake.
Photo: Molly O’Connor
Their habitat of choice are high sandy ridges along the extreme southeastern United States. These ridges are covered with longleaf pine or turkey oak trees and provide enough space, hibernacula, and food to support them. Though a point of origin has not been published, the historic range suggest a possible origin in Florida. It has been suggested that there were once two distinct genetic forms of indigo snakes, one existing along the Gulf coast and another along the Atlantic coast. It appears there was a climatic barrier separating the two which no longer exist and today it is believed that there is only one species in existence now. The historic range of the snake included extreme southwest Mississippi, extreme coastal Alabama, extreme coastal Georgia, and all of Florida. The most recent range shows the snake exists across the entire Florida peninsula and some portions of southern Georgia but does not include all of Georgia’s historic range. It may be extirpated in the Florida panhandle, with a few rare reports, and believed to be completely extirpated in southern Alabama and Mississippi.
Indigos live mainly solitary lives with large home ranges that can extend hundreds to thousands of acres. Males have larger home ranges than females. Indigo snakes are diurnal and forage for their food rather than sit and ambush as many snakes do. Their diet consists of a variety of species, but diet studies show that rodents, frogs, small turtles, and snakes make up the bulk of their prey. It also includes species of venomous snakes like the eastern diamondback and copperhead.
Indigo snakes move between upland and lowland habitats during the warmer months. During the winter months they are closely associated with gopher tortoise burrows where the temperature can range between 45F and 88F and average 54F. They often emerge on sunny winter days to bask but do not move too far from the burrow. It is not known how long indigos live in the wild, but they have lived as long as 25 years in captivity.
During the 20th century the population of these snakes began to decrease. As is often the case, the loss of suitable habitat was a big problem. Longleaf pine forests where no prescribed burning was occurring as frequently as they had historically, the understory altered the habitat to a point where indigos could not support themselves. This also led to the decrease in gopher tortoise populations along with their burrows in which the indigos needed. The harvest of gopher tortoises as food and pets also decreased the number of burrows and thus the number of snakes. Often people would pour gasoline into the burrows to get the tortoises out and this led to the death of many indigos. And then there was the collection of the snakes for the pet trade. Another problem was that they are snakes. An eight-foot snake crawling around had little chance of escaping the wrath of scared humans.
The eastern indigo snake is the largest nonvenomous snake in the southeast.
Photo: Molly O’Connor
Today they are completely missing in Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle. They are listed as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, and there are attempts to restore their populations in Alabama and the eastern Florida panhandle. Though there are occasional reports from the panhandle, there have been no verified records of the eastern indigo in the western panhandle since 1999. We would like to see this animal return but to do so, the habitat will need to be restored, and head starting (releasing captive bred snakes) may be needed as well. Though they are large, they are harmless to humans and actually provide a needed service by controlling the populations of venomous snakes in our region. I for one would love to see them return.
I recent took my granddaughter on a dolphin tour out of Pensacola Beach. It was amazing. It was a cool October morning, not a cloud in the sky, the winds were calm, the water crystal clear due to the lack of rain over the past few weeks, and the dolphins were out.
They are amazing animals and always seem to grab your attention no matter how many times you see them. I was a student at Dauphin Island Sea Lab from 1980-81 and taught there from 1985-1990. No matter how many times we heard “dolphins” when out on one of the research vessels, everyone had to run over to look. People do enjoy seeing dolphins. There is just something about them.
A group of small dolphin leap from the ocean.
Photo: NOAA
During the tour at one location, we saw a group of them (a pod) feeding on fish in the shallow water. They would roll and chase, you could see the sand being kicked up from the bottom as they did. At another location we saw them in breeding mode. Slower moving, caressing, fluke slapping as they turned all around in the water near us. The tour guide told us all sorts of dolphin facts, and some great jokes to go along with them. It was a good program, and my granddaughter was loving it.
She looked over at me at one point and said, “dolphins use to walk on land”. I responded that actually their ancestors did. Dolphins, as we know them, were very much aquatic animals. This led to thoughts on other dolphin questions I have heard over the years.
What is the difference between a dolphin and a whale?
Size… and in some cases teeth.
All whales and dolphins are in the mammalian order Cetacea. Mammalian orders are divided based on the type of teeth they have. Cetaceans are homodonts, meaning they have only one type of tooth. For the toothed whales, these are canines, they lack the molars and incisors that many other mammals have. But some have no teeth rather a specialized fibrous material called baleen, similar to the bristles of a broom, with which they can filter plankton from the water.
There are over 90 species of cetaceans in the world’s oceans, 21 of those are known from the Gulf of Mexico. In a recent published survey by the National Marine Fisheries Service, most of the cetaceans in the Gulf of Mexico are of the toothed whale variety and most occur beyond the continental shelf (which is between 60 and 140 miles south of Pensacola). The only baleen whale in their report was the Byrde’s Whale (Balanopatera edeni). They estimate about 33 of these whales based on their transect surveys and all of these were found beyond the continental shelf between Pensacola and Apalachicola Florida. The largest of the toothed whales reported was the sperm whale, which can reach over 60 feet. They estimate 763 sperm whale in the Gulf, and they were found across the basin beyond the continental shelf.
But it is the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) that we see on the dolphin tours. This is a relatively small toothed whale, reaching lengths of 13 feet, though most in the Gulf region are less than 10 feet. They are the most abundant and most frequently encountered cetacean near shore and within the estuaries and seem to prefer these shallower waters to the open Gulf beyond the shelf. The National Marine Fisheries Service divides them into stocks based on their geographic distribution. They report 37 different stocks of bottlenose dolphins in the northern Gulf. These are divided into western, eastern, and northern stocks, and then subdivided into estuarine stocks. There are separate stocks for the Perdido Bay and Pensacola Bay groups. This report indicated the stock size for the Pensacola and Perdido Bay dolphins was unknown, though our tour guide indicated there were about 250 in the Pensacola Bay stock. The National Marine Fisheries Service did report about 179 dolphins in the Choctawhatchee Bay stock. The reports estimated over 51,000 individuals for the northern Gulf.
Though not listed as endangered or threatened by the Endangered Species Act, there is some concern on the smaller estuarine stocks and so they have been labeled as “strategic”. There has been fishery related mortality with these dolphins in our waters, primarily with longlining and otter trawl operations, but losses are less than four animals/year and do not seem to be impacting their populations.
What is the difference between a dolphin and a porpoise?
Though many associate the long beak as a dolphin, there are dolphins with short snouts. Killer whales are actually large dolphins. The answer goes back to the teeth, as it always does when classifying mammals. Dolphins have conical shaped teeth where porpoise have more spade shaped ones.
How smart are dolphins?
As everyone knows these are highly intelligent animals. They use an audible form of communication that includes squeaks, clicks, and whistles, to keep the pod together. Researchers have discovered that these audible sounds have a sort of “accent” to them that tells dolphins which pod the dolphin communicating is from. This appears to be very important being that dolphins from one social pod may not accept others from different one. I remember in 1993 when a group of five pantropical spotted dolphins stranded on Pensacola Beach. There were four adults and one 3-month year old in the group. After failed attempts to return the dolphins back to the Gulf, it was decided to transport them to a quarantine area near the EPA lab on Pensacola Beach. There was a virus spreading through some European populations and they did not want to risk taking them to the Gulfarium. In route three of the four adults passed away. The remaining adult was named Mango and the juvenile was named Kiwi. After a period of time in quarantine Mango passed away leaving on the young Kiwi. There was a move to return Kiwi to the wild but some of the dolphin experts on scene told me the likely hood of a different pod accepting Kiwi was a risk, and finding her original pod was very unlikely. After determining the dolphin did not have the virus of concern, they decided to move her to the Gulfarium in Ft. Walton Beach, where she lived the rest of her life.
How does dolphin echolocation work?
Echolocation is different than communication, in that it is inaudible. As with communication, the sounds are produced by expelling air through the blowhole. In the case of communication, there is a muscle that partially closes the opening of the blowhole producing the sounds we hear. In echolocation this is completely closed, and the sound waves are moved through a fat filled melon near the head. The shape and density of the melon can be changed by the animal to produce different frequencies of sound but all inaudible to our ears. These sounds are emitted through the melon into the environment, where they contact something and “echo” back to the dolphin. These echoes are received in a fat filled cavity of the lower jaw and transferred to the brain – where the animal is then made aware of the object out in front of them. Some studies suggest that it may be more than knowing there is an object, they may be able to distinguish different kinds of fish. Though it is most effective within 600 feet, studies show their range may be up to 2000 feet. Studies have also shown that some species of toothed whales can alter the frequency of these echolocated sounds to stun their prey making them easier to catch.
Dolphins are amazing animals.
They live between 30 and 50 years in the wild. During this time, they form tight social groups, feed on a variety of prey, and produce new members every 2-3 years. There is so much more to the biology, ecology, and social life of these animals and we recommend you read more. Once you understand them better, we also recommend you take a dolphin tour to view these amazing creatures.
October has been designated as Coastal Dune Lake Appreciation month by Walton County government. Walton County is home to 15 named coastal dune lakes along 26 miles of coastline. These lakes are a unique geographical feature and are only found in a few places in the world including Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, Oregon, and here in Walton County.
A coastal dune lake is defined as a shallow, irregularly shaped or elliptic depressions occurring in coastal communities that share an intermittent connection with the Gulf of Mexico through which freshwater and saltwater is exchanged. They are generally permanent water bodies, although water levels may fluctuate substantially. Typically identified as lentic water bodies without significant surface inflows or outflows, the water in a dune lake is largely derived from lateral ground water seepage through the surrounding well-drained coastal sands. Storms occasionally provide large inputs of salt water and salinities vary dramatically over the long term.
Our coastal dune lakes are even more unique because they share an intermittent connection with the Gulf of Mexico, referred to as an “outfall”, which aides in natural flood control allowing the lake water to pour into the Gulf as needed. The lake water is fed by streams, groundwater seepage, rain, and storm surge. Each individual lake’s outfall and chemistry is different. Water conditions between lakes can vary greatly, from completely fresh to significantly saline.
A variety of different plant and animal species can be found among the lakes. Both freshwater and saltwater species can exist in this unique habitat. Some of the plant species include: rushes (Juncus spp.), sedges (Cyperus spp.), marshpennywort (Hydrocotyleumbellata), cattails (Typha spp.), sawgrass (Cladiumjamaicense), waterlilies (Nymphaea spp.), watershield (Braseniaschreberi), royal fern (Osmundaregalis var. spectabilis), rosy camphorweed (Pluchea spp.), marshelder (Ivafrutescens), groundsel tree (Baccharishalimifolia), and black willow (Salixnigra).
Some of the animal species that can be found include: western mosquitofish (Gambusiaaffinis), sailfin molly (Poecilialatipinna), American alligator (Alligatormississippiensis), eastern mud turtle (Kinosternonsubrubrum), saltmarsh snake (Nerodiaclarkii ssp.), little blue heron (Egrettacaerulea), American coot (Fulicaamericana), and North American river otter (Lutracanadensis). Many marine species co-exist with freshwater species due to the change in salinity within the column of water.
The University of Florida/IFAS Extension faculty are reintroducing their acclaimed “Panhandle Outdoors LIVE!” series. Come celebrate Coastal Dune Lake Appreciation month as our team provides a guided walking tour of the nature trail surrounding Western Lake in Grayton Beach State Park. Join local County Extension Agents to learn more about our globally rare coastal dune lakes, their history, surrounding ecosystems, and local protections. Walk the nature trail through coastal habitats including maritime hammocks, coastal scrub, salt marsh wetlands, and coastal forest. A tour is available October 19th.
The tour is $10.00 (plus tax) and you can register on Eventbrite (see link below). Admission into the park is an additional $5.00 per vehicle, so carpooling is encouraged. We will meet at the beach pavilion (restroom facilities available) at 8:45 am with a lecture and tour start time of 9:00 am sharp. The nature trail is approximately one mile long, through some sandy dunes (can be challenging to walk in), on hard-packed trails, and sometimes soggy forests. Wear appropriate footwear and bring water. Hat, sunscreen, camera, binoculars are optional. Tour is approximately 2 hours. Tour may be cancelled in the event of bad weather.
Coastal plain honeycombhead blooms through the summer on local beaches. Photo credit, Bob Pitts, National Park Service
Over my years of leading people on interpretive trail hikes, I have learned it is particularly important to know the names of whatever happens to be in bloom. These flowers are eye-catching, and inevitably someone will ask what they are. In fact, one of my favorite wildflower identification books is categorized not by taxonomy, but by bloom color—with a rainbow of tabs down the edge of the book for easy identification.
Wildflower identification can be tough, but color-coded guidebooks are really helpful! Photo credit: Carrie Stevenson, UF IFAS Extension
In our coastal dunes right now, several plants are showing off vibrant yellow blooms. Seaside goldenrod, coreopsis, and other asters are common. Rarer, and the subject of today’s post, is the Coastal Plain Honeycombhead (Balduina angustifolia). It has bright yellow flowers, but often gets more notice due to its unusual appearance when not in bloom. The basal leaves are bright green and similar in shape and arrangement to a pine cone or bottlebrush (albeit a tiny one), sticking straight up in the sand. The plants are typically found on the more protected back side of primary dunes or further into secondary dunes, a little more inland from the Gulf.
When not in bloom, the plant resembles a green pinecone planted in the sand. Photo credit: Carrie Stevenson, UF IFAS Extension
The plant plays a special role in beach ecology, as a host plant for Gulf fritillary butterflies and the Gulf Coast solitary bee (Hesperapis oraria). The bee is a ground-dwelling pollinator insect that forages only in the barrier islands of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. The species is currently the subject of a University of Florida study (they’re out at Ft. Pickens right now), as the endemic bee’s sole source of nectar and pollen is the honeycombhead flower. As of publication date, no bee nests have been discovered. Researchers are interested in learning more about the insect’s life cycle and nesting behaviors to better understand and protect its use of local habitats. Based on closely related species, it is believed the Gulf Coast solitary bee builds a multi-chambered nest under the soft sands of the dunes.
Adult female Hesperapis oraria foraging on coastal plain honeycombhead (Balduina angustifolia). Photograph by John Bente, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida Park Service.
While the honeycombhead plant is found in peninsular Florida and coastal Georgia, the bee has been identified only in a 100 km² area between Horn Island, MS, and St. Andrews Bay, FL. Luckily for the bee, large swaths of this land are preserved as part of Gulf Islands National Seashore and several state parks. Nonetheless, these coastal dune habitats are threatened by hurricanes, sea level rise, and development (outside the park boundaries). Due to its rarity and limited habitat, a petition has been submitted to the Fish and Wildlife Service for protection under the Endangered Species Act. 0
In recent weeks there have been reports of large masses of jellyfish along the Gulf Coast. I have actually heard people state “I would rather be in the water with 100 sharks than 100 jellyfish”. Maybe that is true from some. Honestly, it seems dealing with sharks could be easier. Jellyfish are just there in a swarm. The more you try to move them away, the more they come towards you – it is like trying to avoid the smoke from a campfire.
But jellyfish exist and people sometimes have to deal with them. The thing they hate about them, of course, are their painful stings. As Jimmy Buffett puts it – “They are simple protoplasm – clear as cellophane – they ride the winds of fortune – life without a brain”. This is prreeettttyyyyy close.
Jellyfish are common on both sides of the island. This one has washed ashore on Santa Rosa Sound.
The “cellophane” jelly material is called mesoglea and it is a protein-based material that is 90% water. Lay a jellyfish on a deck and see what is left at the end of the day – not much. The bell undulates rhythmically controlled not by a brain but by a series of nerves – what some scientists call a “nerve net”. At the base of the bell is a single opening – the mouth. There are no teeth and whatever they swallow enters a simple gut where digestive enzymes do their work. But it is the only opening – so, waste material must exit through the same opening. Yes… they go to the bathroom through their mouth. Nice eh…
Then there are the tentacles – those lovely tentacles. These are armed with small cells called nematocysts that harbor a small dart tipped with a drop of venom. Each nematocyst as a small trigger which, when bumped, will fire the dart injecting the venom. When you bump a tentacle, you are literally bumping hundreds of these nematocysts and receive hundreds of drops of venom. Some species hurt, some do not. Those that hurt are no fun.
So, why SO many at one time in one place?
Most jellyfish feed on small food. Those food sources tend to multiple when the water is warm (and it is warm right now) and there are lots of nutrients in the water. When we have heavy rain (and we have had heavy rains this year) the runoff introduces large amounts of nutrients to the system. Warm nutrient rich water mean increase in jellyfish food, which in turn means increase in jellyfish. With winds and tides working together (and we saw this with the recent front that passed through), the jellyfish are shoved into smaller locations. In recent weeks that has been close to shore and the thick masses of jellyfish we have witnessed.
They do fly the purple flags when jellyfish are spotted. It us unusual for them to be a problem on both the Sound and Gulf sides. So, usually if they are bad on the Gulf side, you can move your beach day to the Sound and be fine. And remember – this too shall end. It won’t last forever.
Our coastal dune lakes are even more unique because they share an intermittent connection with the Gulf of Mexico, referred to as an “outfall”, which aides in natural flood control allowing the lake water to pour into the Gulf as needed. The lake water is fed by streams, groundwater seepage, rain, and storm surge. Each individual lake’s outfall and chemistry is different. Water conditions between lakes can vary greatly, from completely fresh to significantly saline.
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