Florida: A Daggerwing Evening

The Daggerwing Nature Center lies not far from my parents' home in west Boca Raton. It is quite small, and has never quite recovered it's former glory after the grove of strangler figs at its heart was destroyed by Hurricane Wilma in 2006.

Nonetheless, it is a pleasant place for a stroll, particularly in the evening.  I have occasionally turned up some interesting creatures there. It is still the only place I have seen a Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), back in its pre-hurricane days, and the Regal Darner I included two posts back hailed from Daggerwing.  I took this particular evening stroll on April 22, 2012, along the boardwalk and through the thickets of Baldcypress, Cabbage Palmetto (Sabal palmetto, above) and Pond Apple (Annona glabra, below) that have replaced the figs.

The boardwalk into the former fig forest passes over a small stream connecting two ponds, and it is worth peering over the railing to see what might swim by.

The Florida Gar (Lepisosteus platyrhincus) is not only large and rather spectacular, but is one if the most interesting freshwater fishes in the state. Gars are ancient creatures, the only members of a small family of seven living species confined to North America (south to Costa Rica), including a single species found only in Cuba.  Gars, with their possible distant cousin the Bowfin, make up the living Holostei, a group of bony fishes that has been lingering around since the Permian, 250 million years ago.

 

The stream can be a bit like a highway in rush hour - gars going one way, Florida Soft-shelled Turtles (Apalone ferox) the other.

Here a softshell breaks the surface on its way past.

Daggerwing is the only place I have been sure of seeing Peninsula Cooters (Pseudemys peninsularis).  Almost every other turtle I have looked at, hoping to make it into a Peninsula Cooter, in places like Wakodahatchee turned out to be a Florida Red-bellied Turtle (Pseudemys nelsoni).

This, though, is clearly a Peninsula Cooter, showing off his most obvious mark - the yellow "hairpins" (they look more to me like tuning forks) on the back of his head.

I say "his" because this individual has very long foreclaws.  Male Pseudemys turtles use their foreclaws to create vibrations in the water during courtship - apparently a way of stimulating the female, though they sometimes do the same thing, for unknown reasons, to other males.

Finally - and as a last image from our April 2012 visit to Florida - here is a Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura).  This, of course, is a bird I can see equally well back home in Canada - so condor this a sort of segue, for it is to Canada that we turn next.