The Northern Flicker is a commonly seen bird across North America – and it is a woodpecker – although one more often seen on bare or mowed ground where it feeds extensively on insects and other ground- or rotted-wood-dwelling insects. Flickers in the East have yellow-tinged wing and tail feathers – those in the west have red-tinged feathers. The two color-morphs meet at the edge of the Great Plains and often interbreed – hence they are considered a single species. This is a woodpecker that is often seen in mowed and bare areas of our towns and cities as well as in the countryside. It is a poor cavity excavator, requiring nest sites with well-rotted wood – or such modern materials as Styrofoam used in trim on our homes. Occasionally it will even nest in a hole in the ground – where it may find “bed and breakfast”. Males are easily identified by their black “moustache”; females lack it.

Water Lettuce (Pistia stratiotes) is an invasive exotic aquatic plant that has been in Florida for hundreds of years – perhaps merely as a result of being snagged on or carried in bilge water of early sailing ships traveling between the Amazon River in South America and Florida. Once here – and in other countries around the world, it quickly reproduced and was spread down rivers and streams and even into isolated lakes by boats and individuals who admired its beauty. To this day it has negative impacts on native wildlife, shading swamp waters, thus cooling them and reducing sunlight needed by native plant species, often making it difficult for herons, egrets, Anhingas, and other aquatic animals to find food. If you boat in waters with water lettuce, always check your boat and trailer for plants caught on them. Don’t introduce this plant to waters where it isn’t currently found. In spite of its name.

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?