INTRUDING ON WARD’S HERONS
Ward’s heron is the Florida variety of the great blue heron, like him
only more so. There is slight difference in the marking, the _Ardea
wardi_ having olive instead of black legs, whiter lower parts, and a
somewhat darker neck. But Ward’s heron is almost a foot taller than the
other, and when you see the two fly side by side you might well think
the great blue heron the little blue heron, so much does this peninsular
prototype dwarf his compatriot of wider range. There are Ward’s herons
in the big lagoon here east of White City mornings that I am confident
stand six feet in height. Out there on marshy islands they have a superb
dignity of pose, statues of frozen alertness. Taking wing they blanket
the landscape with wide pinions and their legs stretch rudder-wise to a
great length behind them, while their necks are doubled back on
themselves till the head is hunched in between the shoulders and the
protruding neck curve looks like a pouch. By this use of the neck you
will know them in the distance from the sandhill cranes because the
crane flies with neck fully stretched. But the sandhill crane is a foot
shorter, anyway. Ward’s heron rarely gets out of Florida, being found
most frequently in the lower two-thirds of the State, or from Alachua
County down.
It was by way of the sandhill cranes that I came to the heron rookery.
They have a way of setting up a most prodigious cackling, a sonorous
croaking call that outdoes all the barnyard fowls in St. Lucie County.
It is quite like the barnyard, too, a cutdarkuting as of husky Plymouth
Rock hens that have laid eggs and are proud of it. It carries far. The
first time I heard it I hastened cautiously a mile or two through the
flat-woods, expecting every minute to come onto the birds. But after I
had made my mile or two the birds took flight, writing black Greek
letters along the horizon. Most often in the dawn I heard them over
toward the big lagoon and traced the sound there to its most conspicuous
landmark. This is a tiny island, holding a score or two of cabbage
palmettos flanked with odorous myrtles, these in turn standing in a
jungle of ferns, osmundas in the main, a picturesquely beautiful spot,
standing in the middle of this big, shallow lagoon that stretches thirty
miles, north and south, flanking the pineapple-clad ridge from Fort
Pierce down.
To this shore in the gray of dawn the sound
[Illustration: “A superb dignity of pose, statues of frozen
alertness”]
led me and then vanished with all evidence, the croaking cranes having
slipped away on silent wings. I stopped a moment to admire the sunrise.
It was a clear, winter morning, cool for Florida, and dawn had tumbled
suddenly out of a cloudless sky, upon a flat land. It was too cold for
the usual morning mists and there was nothing to restrain the light. It
was daybreak all in a moment. Yet, after all, there was a good space of
time between the dawn and the sunrise, a time in which all the sky in
the east grew golden and then crimson. The island was two islands, one
under the other with half the palms pointing directly toward the nadir.
Lagoons within the lagoon reflected the pellucid blue of the high sky
and the crimson gold of the eastern horizon, seven-foot saw grass
dividing them with its dense tangle. Out of this saw grass came the
clucking of coot as the flocks began to bestir themselves. Then there
was a great chorus of musical chuckles and a great cloud of witnesses to
the joy of living arose. The coot spend the night in the water in the
little pools among the saw grass, but the grass tops are full of
blackbirds all night long.
With the chorus out they came, a thousand redwings flying jubilantly
overhead to their feeding grounds. Behind me in the palmetto scrub there
was further rustle of wings and todo of waking birds. I turned to see
what was there and a wave of warmth struck my back and swept by me. I
knew by that that the sun had popped up over the pineapple ridge to
eastward and the day had fairly begun, but I waited, still watching the
palmetto scrub that here grew in dense shrubbery, three feet high. Out
of it came a cock robin, swinging so near me that he shied with a little
nervous shriek of dismay. At the word the palmetto began to spout
robins, singly and in flocks, filling the air with their fluttering and
their good morning cries till the eruption had lasted for several
minutes and I do not know how many hundred birds had taken wing. In this
region the robins, still lingering on the fifteenth of February as if
they knew of the snow and zero weather North, keep together in flocks,
often of hundreds if not thousands of birds. Moreover, they roost
together, always on or near the ground amongst the scrub palmettos,
though why there instead of the pines or the tall palmettos I do not
know. So with the blackbirds, redwing and rusty, crow blackbird and
Florida grackle, all seem to roost low together in the great beds of saw
grass out in the lonely lagoon.
Turning back to the east, I found the lagoon a flood of crimson glory
with my palm-topped island swimming in it, all rimmed with fire, for the
sun was just behind the dense trees whose feathery fronds seemed just
crisping with its flame. And then I looked again, carefully, and took
the bird glass from my pocket and focused that on the tree tops as best
I might against the crimson glow, for there above the fronded palms
stretched a half-dozen or so of long necks with big, keen-pointed beaks
set on small heads that topped the necks at right angles. Standing in
the palm tops, or perhaps sitting there, were a dozen great Ward’s
herons. I watched them for some time in their comings and goings, and
soon made up my mind that there were many nests there.
I had stumbled upon a Ward’s heron rookery and was greatly pleased. Yet
so far the stumble was a long-distance one. The island was an eighth of
a mile away, and though there are boats on the lagoon, the saw grass
grows so dense and divides portions of it off from other portions so
definitely and finally, that none were available. You cannot penetrate
the saw grass with a boat. I tried wading in it out toward my island,
for the lagoon is nowhere deep except in the alligator holes, but only a
pretty desperate man would make his way far in the saw grass. The herons
flew croaking to and fro to their nests, but I had to be content to
watch them with the bird glass.
Some days later I had built a tiny canoe of cotton drilling, stretched
over palmetto-stalk ribs, and painted. The adventures of this wee
coracle, going to the lagoon, on the lagoon, and coming from the lagoon
were humorously grotesque and exciting, but they have no part in this
story. It is sufficient to say that it floated like a bird--too much
like a bird sometimes--and that after due study and persistence, I
reached the island in it a morning about a week after the discovery of
it. I was right. The palmetto tops were full of the nests of Ward’s
heron.
The island itself was a gem of palm-topped green in the clear water of
the lagoon. Along its edges sedges and bulrushes grew from the water,
and as the ground rose one came upon a grove of the lovely olive-colored
myrtle, the spicebush of the South. Among these myrtles growing almost
breast high were the Osmunda ferns, regalis mostly, so thick that they
made progress slow. Beneath the palmettos was a noisy debris of fallen
leaves, that rattled and crunched under foot, reminding one of walking
through Northern woods in winter when there is a crust on the snow. It
was not until I struck this pseudo snow crust that the herons took
alarm. Then there was a crashing in the tree tops as great wings flapped
against the broad, stiff leaves of the palms and the birds took flight
with harsh croaks, circling about till I was reminded of the harpies in
the Æneid. Some flapped off to the mainland, others lighted
[Illustration: A little blue heron and her nest, the commonest Florida
heron]
in the marsh shallows near by and froze there. It is surprising how
immediately a big heron, thus motionless, becomes but an inanimate part
of the landscape and escapes notice. Never before had I seen the big
birds so near, every mark and feather of their noble forms being brought
to close range by the glass. A most striking feature was the long,
drooping, graceful plume which grew from the back of the head, a mark of
the breeding season.
I found young birds in various stages of growth, from those almost grown
which took wing when too closely approached, to little chaps that peeped
beseechingly when the old birds came sailing back, evidently expecting
to be fed. There were other nests in which I could see no young birds
which seemed to be in good condition and which I thought contained eggs.
But how was I to prove this? I might “shin” one of the smooth, straight
trunks if it were like that of a Northern tree. But shinning a palmetto
is another matter. The endogenous fiber crumbles on the outside, as to
the weather-worn pith, but leaves the trunk beset with tiny splinters
that fill whatever rubs too intimately against them. I might climb one
of these palmetto trunks in that way if I had to; in fact, a morning or
two later--but of that anon. I decided that one tall palm dominated a
series of nests and if I could perch among its fronds I would be able
to make intimate study of what goes on in heron land. I circumnavigated
the island and crossed it from side to side, finding there nothing to
alarm but much to interest.
Some days later I came back, equipped to go to the top of my selected
palm. It was a different sort of a morning. All the day before the wind
had blown from the south and the sun had shone fervently in on a land
that lay sweltering in warmth under a midsummer-like temperature. The
weather which had been like that of the finest October became like that
of the finest July. A myriad insects, before silent, found a voice as
evening came on and the night, so full of genial warmth, thrilled with
their gentle calls. Frog voices came from the little ponds in the
savanna on the way down to the big lagoon, and that chill which comes
with a windless dawn even was not great enough to silence them. Only the
daybreak put out the lights of the big fireflies whose yellow-green,
fairy lamps had glowed and paled all night long among the grasses and
bushes of the roadside. Something of the fervor of the tropics had come
upon the land.
I ought to have realized what other life this genial warmth was likely
to bring out, especially on the little island, the one dry refuge in
miles of wild lagoon, but a month of cold weather had lulled me into
forgetfulness of what every man who tramps the wilds of southern Florida
must not forget. So I landed right eagerly and marched up under the
palmettos with an armful of short, stout slats, a pocket full of nails,
a hammer and a small saw. I would nail the slats, ladderwise, one above
another up the trunk of my chosen palmetto, saw an entrance to the very
center of the branching fronds at its top, and there I should sit, the
very head of the palmetto cabbage, in a bower of green, watching my
neighbors in a score or so of nests a little below me. I submit that it
was a proper scheme, and the only reason why it was not carried out to
immediate success was that I had not reckoned on the tenants of the
lower flat.
Upstairs everything was all right. The herons flapped away with croaking
dismay as I came beneath their trees. I could see the long necks of some
of the half-mature birds stretched upward from the nests of slender
crossed reeds and sticks, and I glanced from them to the ground beneath
the selected palmetto as I strode over brittle rubbish of their dead
leaves and brush and royal ferns. And then I stopped with one foot in
the air and a little whoop of dismay and utter terror of what was about
to happen, for there beneath my selected palm, almost beneath my raised
foot, was the body of a great snake. His head and tail were both hidden
by the fallen palmetto leaves, but I knew he could not be less than
seven feet long by his thickness, which was several inches. I doubt if I
could have much more than spanned him with my two hands at any part of
his visible length, about five feet, as he stretched from palm to palm.
However, I did not try any such test. I was content to gaze at him with
bulging eyes and watch him, in breathless silence, for fear he might
make the first move. Nor was this study reassuring. It began with hopes
that he might be merely one of the harmless big south Florida snakes.
Some of these are found eight feet long and proportionately big round,
and are looked upon with friendly favor by people who know them best,
because they not only eat rats and other vermin but are fabled to kill
and eat the poisonous snakes. The study ended in the conviction that
here was none of these. I knew that I was looking upon a grandfather of
rattlers, a diamond-back seven feet long, four inches thick, and stuffed
with venom from his little wicked yellow eyes to his stubby tail. Almost
any hunter of this region will show you seven-foot skins. Some have dens
hung with them. Here was the real thing.
In blithely entering this apartment house, bound for the upper story, I
had reckoned without the hosts of the lower flat. On my previous visit
this present incumbent, and I knew not how many more, had been stowed,
torpid, beneath the leaves for warmth. This was their weather, and they
were sleeping without many bedclothes.
I reached for my shooting-coat pocket and brought out a 38-caliber
revolver. I had carried this for months for just such a desperate
emergency, and the sight of its gleaming barrel gave me confidence. But
not when I noted the tremulous figure eights which the front sight made
in the air as I tried to get a bead on mine enemy. This would not do. A
miss or a wound would mean an argument for which the island was far too
small, from my point of view, to say nothing of the possible
reënforcements for the other fellow. I backed gingerly away with both
eyes over both shoulders as well as on the snake which moved almost
imperceptibly. I tiptoed round him, trying to find some vantage ground,
trying to get a little less shake into the muzzle of that revolver, but
it was no use. The thought of stirring him up in the midst of that
tangle of dead palm leaves, royal ferns and bushes was not a pleasant
one, and I tiptoed back along my trail to my canoe, which looked mighty
cozy and comfortable when I got to it. This cautious retreat was wise,
too. The rattler did not follow me, but on my way I passed two big
cotton-mouthed moccasins, thick, clumsy, four feet long and
stubby-tailed, and almost as venomous as the rattlesnake whose island
they helped tenant. I must have stepped within a foot of these on my way
in.
The island in the big lagoon is a lovely spot. Its tenants of the upper
story are beautiful and most fascinating. But the folk of the lower
flat! Br-r r, wur-r r, ugh!