March 2013

Dear friends and family all around the world –

I’ve posted pictures and random snippets of stories during this, what was my first month and a half at the Archbold Biological Station in Venus, Florida, on this blog and on other social media. But what, you may ask, actually goes on here? Where is “here”? And what’s this “Archbold Biological Station” all about, anyway?

Well, I’ll tell you. Or, as per usual, I’ll show you.

Right, so… Florida?

Yep. I’ve swapped America’s Dairy Land for the Sunshine State. This is the Venus, located in the middle of orange grove and cattle country Central Florida. The Archbold Biological Station itself consists of roughly 9,000 acres of scrub and ranch land with a colorful history involving great and powerful oil tycoons, intrepid world adventurers, and finally us humble scientists. The Station has a great mix of people from all over the US and the world, with a diverse range of interests, skill sets and backgrounds, all coming together to study the habitats unique to this patch of Florida.

So that’s where I am, but what makes Archbold special?

The Lake Wales Ridge, on which the Station sits, forms a backbone of “higher” elevation running north to south down the middle of the peninsula. In the long ago past when ocean levels were higher, this ridge was the only part of the state that was above sea level. Consequently, islands of isolated habitats were formed that maintained their uniqueness once the oceans receded to their current levels. These rare natural areas are home to plants and animals found in very few, or no other, places on Earth.

The main labs at Archbold (Bird, Plant, Herp / Restoration Ecology, and Bug, to keep things simple) each study different, but overlapping, aspects of the Lake Wales Ridge. As a terrible oversimplification, here’s what people work on.

Florida Scrub Jays –

Plants and habitats (there’s a lot of different projects in the Plant lab…) –

Gopher Tortoises –

Indigo Snakes –

Fire Management –

Invasive Species –

Seasonal Ponds –

Restored Wetlands –

Grazing –

Arthropods –

And much, much more.

So, that skipped a lot (such as, what’s my place in all this?)… which is OK! There’s tons more information about Archbold at this website – http://www.archbold-station.org/ – and I’ll be writing more about each of these projects as I continue always to learn from others. That’s all for now, as it’s Saturday, and verging on my nap time. Holy crap I love not being in school.

How to Eat an Apple Snail

If you’re a Limpkin, you don’t really need to be told how to eat an apple snail. You’ve got a sweet bill shaped like tweezers, angled ever so slightly in the right direction to fit the Fibonacci spiral of a shell. All you do is walk around on your stilts you call legs, find a giant apple snail, wail at it for a while until you find the right angle, pull as hard as you can with your lanky ass neck, and tadaaaa, snail meat.

Down it in one, and move on to the next snail. Little tip though, don’t try to swallow the whole snail with shell and all, they are rather large.

March 24, 2013 2

What we saw on the canal.

Call it a stream, call it a creek, call it a canal, call it a man-made drainage ditch that flows into the other man-made lakes so that when it’s the “rainy season” the entire state doesn’t flood, but call it whatever you’d like, this little patch of yard where the water meets the land sure attracts a lot of beasts and birds.

In one morning, the interesting list of occasionally noisy and always entertaining set flitting and floating and flying creatures below passed by my little corner of Florida behind my apartment while I was enjoying some short stories and a tall coffee. The list includes (in order of picture appearance) an Anhinga, an Osprey, a pair of Sandhill Cranes, copious amounts of Common Grackles, a Great Blue Heron, a pair of Wood Ducks (male only in this pic, but the female was right behind him), a turtle (possibly a Florida Cooter), a male Cardinal (yes, in a banana tree), a little hoppy bug eating small thing that I think is a Palm Warbler, a few ubiquitous Turkey Vultures, some Common Gallinules, and a lot of noisy Northern Mockingbirds. There were also American Crows and Red-winged Blackbirds galore, but I guess I was too used to those to take any meaningful pictures of them this time around.

I say that this is what “we” saw, because my new faithful companion Flip was by my side the whole time, gently mewing away whenever a bird would come around. Especially the Anhinga. She doesn’t much care for the Anhinga, which is admittedly weird looking and much much bigger than she is…

March 17, 2013 0

Ferns! They’re great!

Right! So, it’s been a while, and I have a lot to share. Unfortunately, I don’t know where to start. My journey has taken me to the wilds of the inland isles that is the Lake Wales Ridge in southern Florida. The Archbold Biological Station, my new place of employment, is home to the desert like scrub, a cattle filled ranch, restored wetlands, pockets of oaks that don’t look like oaks, things called rosemary balds (sounds dumb, actually awesome), and a lake surrounded by places that look like a set of velociraptors could ambush you while you’re trying to work (sorry, we watched Jurassic Park last night…).