Dr. Jerry Jackson

The Double-crested Cormorant is a resident bird in Florida – especially in south Florida. Its numbers swell each winter with migrants from farther north. Cormorants are well-known as fish-eaters, although they also readily consume other small animals. These cormorants are social birds and can often be seen on open water in flotillas of a dozen or more. They typically swim on the surface with head held up and body showing above the surface – whereas their relatives, the Anhingas, typically show only their head and long neck above the water. Double-crested Cormorants have bare bright orange skin around their face, brilliantly blue eyes, and a stout hooked bill that they use to capture fish.

Movements of plants and animals differ tremendously and involve adaptations that vary from species to species depending on needs ranging from food sources, climate, mate availability, predator presence, basic physical characteristics, and multiple combinations of such factors. Survival of species, however, involves the ability to move and occupy new habitats and changing climatic conditions. In this week’s Wild Things I discuss a wide range of creatures and the way in which they are adapted to move as needed through their world – and ours.

The Loggerhead Shrike is a songbird whose vocalizations are often not musical. It is also a predator that feeds on creatures ranging from small caterpillars to mice, lizards, small snakes, and birds. This is a bird of more open areas, but its nests are typically in a dense tangle of small branches of a tree or shrub. It hunts in open areas, often from a fence or utility wire. Its flight is typically low, direct, and fast. Shrikes often take advantage of insects, birds, and other small animals injured by traffic on our roads and – as a result of their typical low flight, are often highway victims themselves. Pruning of trees and shrubs to “open them up” is a major threat to shrikes (and other songbirds) because it opens their nests to predators. As a result of such pruning, highway traffic, and pesticides, Loggerhead Shrike populations have declined greatly.

Alligator Flag is a very large herbaceous plant that is common at the shallow water edges of south Florida ponds streams, and roadside ditches. It can be found year round and blooms primarily from early summer through the fall – then dies back to a great extent in mid-winter to emerge again in early spring. This native plant provides food, shelter, and often nesting sites for a great diversity of wildlife that can often be viewed from shore or from boardwalks such as at Corkscrew Audubon Sanctuary, Six-mile-Cypress Slough Preserve, and many other sites in south Florida.

Warblers are those tiny and sometimes brightly colored feathered missiles you see zooming from tree branch to weedy stalks during the winter months in Southwest Florida.

Where did our use of plants for the holidays come from, and why do we use them?

An autumnal holiday tradition — the pumpkin — is a true native of the New World. The gourd was put to many good uses by Native Americans and assimilated into other cultures as they came here. Dr. Jerry Jackson takes a look at our native produce which includes corn and three species of wild rice.

Wild Turkeys have the word “wild” in their name to distinguish them from the birds that have been domesticated for centuries and bred for their meat and feathers. Florida is one of the prime native homes for Wild Turkeys although they now occur in almost every state as a result of introductions and other conservation efforts. They also occur naturally well into Latin America – where the first domesticated turkeys were found by early explorers and taken back to Europe. There were so few that they were not regularly eaten, but kept for special occasions – such as our Thanksgiving and other holidays. Wild Turkeys are related to pheasants, quails, and yes, even jungle fowl (the wild ancestors of our chickens). Males are easily distinguished from females by the black tips of breast and back feathers on males and brown to buff tips of the same feathers of females. Males are also generally larger than females. Males have spurs on their back of their legs; females only occasionally have spurs.