Florida Day 3

 Seminole State Forest. That’s where we were going on our last day in Florida. It sounded like a birder’s paradise and due to its vastness, birding via vehicle appeared to be the best way to traverse the park and see as much as possible. While Murphy and I both love a good hike, we were worn out from the past two days of hikes.

We arrived at the forest early, about 7 a.m. As we pulled in we noticed that the gate further up the road was closed.

“Okay, no big deal,” we thought, “we can probably just push it open.”

NOPE.

There were half a dozen locks on the gate with no indication of who to call if you wanted to get in. So we parked. It was time to adapt. We would hike around instead. The only problem was that because we had planned to drive through we brought no food and had very little water. Actually, no. We brought no water. Oh well, we weren’t going to let a few life essentials hold us back from possibly seeing new critters.

Before starting our hike, we headed down to a nearby pond to take a quick look around. Out in the distance we noticed little bumps sticking out of the water. There were about four scattered about. A closer look with the binoculars revealed them to be turtles! Floating near the surface, with just their heads sticking out, they were likely absorbing what little sun was peeking through the dense cloud cover. Because all we could really see were their heads, it was difficult to determine what species of turtle they were. However, it is certain that because of the yellow patterning on their heads they were in the Pseudemys genus - a turtle genus in Florida with three species. These species include the River Cooter, Coastal Plain Cooter and the Florida Red-bellied Cooter.

We began walking down the dusty road. Fortunately, the sun was not out otherwise we would have been baking. Not long into our walk we heard a ”knock-knock” - a classic woodpecker sound. This was close, so we began to scan the trees with our binoculars and then we found it: a nice looking Pileated Woodpecker. It was off in the distance a ways (too far for a photo) on a Pine tree doing some light tapping with its beak. Pileated Woodpeckers are the largest woodpecker in the United States, assuming the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is extinct. They thrive in large forests with standing dead and downed trees. If you have ever been walking in a forest and have seen large oval to rectangular holes in trees, that is a sign that a Pileated as been there. They excavate these large areas in order to get to their favorite food: Carpenter Ants. The drumming they do on trees can be exceptionally loud and is not only used to excavate into trees, but to let other Pileated Woodpeckers know that this is their territory. They are a fantastic looking bird with their white masked face and bright red mohawk. Their call is like no other as well; it reminds me of some kind of monkey or something very different compared to other birds I am familiar with and it sure sticks out when there is silence in the forest.

In the two days we had been in Florida, we had yet to be in a place like Seminole State Forest. The area we were hiking was sandy, dry and full of short, scrub plants. This mostly consisted of Oak species and some Palmettos.

The sandiness had us excited. This seemed like just the environment to see Dusky Pygmy Rattlesnakes and Southern Hognose Snakes, both of which would be lifers. We came upon an old trailer and permanent camp that is used when the forest has controlled hunts. We flipped what cover there was around the camp but found nothing. We moved on, down the sandy paths, occasionally walking off path into a clearing to flip and look around. It was not going well for us. However, I soon spotted a bird perched on a 10 ft. snag, just above the scrub. It had a long tail pointing down towards the ground.

“Scrub Jay!”

It quickly dove back into the scrub but returned again to its perch shortly after. While some of you may be thinking, “oh wow, a Jay, who cares?” Well that’s where you’re wrong, this is not the Blue Jay that many people see on the regular, the Florida Scrub Jay is only found in Florida and is dependent on the scrub environments that we found this one in. I also happen to think that they look more refined than Blue Jays, with their blue and white plumage and leaner looking builds. While it would have been great to see more, we know that there were more, just not visible to us. See, the Florida Scrub Jay has an interesting behavior; they form families, meaning that a pair will raise chicks that end up hanging around mom and dad for a few years to help them raise more siblings. When the family is hanging out in the dense scrub looking for food, one of the family members will fly up to a perch above the scrub and act as a lookout, also known as a sentinel. What we saw was the sentinel, making sure the rest of its family was safe. Sadly, the Florida Scrub Jay is considered a Vulnerable Species by IUCN due to habitat destruction and fragmentation. I consider myself very fortunate to have seen this bird in my lifetime.

The Scrub Jay would be the most exciting find at Seminole State Forest. We had decided to head to a different part of the park that would have a different ecology, however, due to the vastness of the park we eventually felt it was better to just leave and head elsewhere.

Somewhere a little swampier and shaded.
We drove further north to The Marshall Swamp; a section of the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway (what a mouthful!). We were excited upon our arrival, it was a different place: shady, with tall trees and lots of cover on the ground. Murphy and I separated on either side of the trail, flipping things we thought looked promising. Again, we were disappointed. However, within ten minutes of us being there, I heard a familiar call in the canopy...it was another Pileated Woodpecker! Two in one day at separate sites was truly something special for us. I was able to get fairly close to the tree it was in and watched with my binoculars. Murphy was away with my camera, but I was content on just watching this bird hop around, up, and down the tree, tapping here and there. It flew off, likely in search of a snack and we moved on down the trail as well.

It was shady and damp along the trail. There was one looped part of the trail we decided to take and it looked like we were the first people to decide to walk it in sometime. Holding back brush, I felt a mosquito on my leg and as I smacked into another world I noticed something else...A tick moving at lightning speed up my leg. Not today, I thought and flicked it off into the forest, hoping to not run into it again.

Here’s the thing about flipping cover to look for herps: it is really a drag when you aren’t finding anything. But when you finally do, regardless of what it is, those dozens of logs and stones with nothing under them seem worth it. One log finally produced something. I flipped a half rotten log and did a scan. I saw a black and shiny small orb and upon closer inspection saw that the orb was actually the eye of a very well camouflaged frog. Before the frog could move, I grabbed a quick picture with my phone for IDing later. Then, in an attempt to move some debris away from atop the frog, I startled it too much. It took a few hops and buried itself somewhere in the forest floor. Later when I failed to ID the frog, I turned to a great app called iNaturalist, which is a sort of community science app. Thanks to some suggestions from folks on there it was determined to be a Greenhouse Frog which is nonnative to Florida but instead hails from Cuba. It’s believed that its presence in mainland Florida is due to unintentional distribution by humans via the nursery trade. It’s considered to be naturalized and some debate as to whether it is a beneficial species or not.

We hit a few swampy areas further down the trail with short boardwalks over them. We’d carefully scan the water and the trees in the area before walking onto the boardwalk just in case there might be something near that would hide in our presence.

One of the swampy areas did turn up two birds, however, only one of them was visible. First we heard a Barred Owl in the distance, but it would never reveal itself. Their call is close to what one would think of when they think of a stereotypical owl call. It’s best described as sounding like ”who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?” It‘s quite eerie to hear their call in a swamp, fitting, but eerie. Next we would hear a light tapping on a tree. The binoculars came out and Murphy and I both found the Woodpecker.

”Top of the head is red.”

”Throat is red too.”

”Black and white on the face.”

We described it out loud to one another as we looked at it so that it’s description would stick in our minds. It turned out to be a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a bird that migrates through Michigan, but wasn’t one I had seen before. They like to leave shallow holes in neat lines on trees. Having a job that works with trees, I was familiar with these holes.

We moved along and flipped until our hearts were content and eventually headed back to the car. This trail was the conclusion of our trip to Florida.
I left Florida with many thoughts. Due to high expectations set by myself I had been disappointed with the amount that we saw. In my mind we would hit the jackpot every time we flipped a log, but this simply isn’t the case. It takes persistence and patience to find things and seeing that we only had three days to find things in a place we are quite unfamiliar with, I think we did well. On our next journey down to Florida we will be exploring different areas at a different time of year with a better mindset and preparedness. In the mean time, this trip has got me very excited for spring and summer herping in Michigan/Ohio and has really made me realize that I need some serious improvement in my photography!