Grunt

In the next few weeks, baby alligators, cramped in chicken-sized, leathery eggs that look like deflated balloons will begin to grunt. It’s really more like a bark. It tells mama alligator, who has patiently defended the nest for the last sixty-three days, that her babies are ready to bust out of their eggs and crawl into the light.

Female alligators often make nests in secluded areas of a swamp, mostly for protection from other alligators. They scrape vegetation and mud into a large mound typically four feet wide and three feet high. They can lay anywhere from 20-80  eggs in the nest before covering it over and allowing the decaying vegetation to produce the heat that will incubate the eggs and support the development of her baby gators or “grunts”.

As an ectotherm, or “cold-blooded” reptile, she can’t contribute heat to the nest. Her role is to protect the nest from predators like raccoons, opossums, snakes and crows. The sound of the grunts barking encourages her to scrape the top off the nest and assist in their introduction into the water. When they are born they are typically six inches long. By their first birthday they have grown to a foot in length and grow on average, a foot a year for the first seven years of their lives.

As young grunts they are near the bottom of the food chain. Hatchlings can be eaten by Wood Storks, Snapping Turtles, Raccoons, Large Mouth Bass and other Alligators. Within a few years they are on the top of the food chain and can eat anything they can chomp and swallow. People are not on the menu.

On an incredibly scenic bike ride through the 7,017 acre Bird Rookery Swamp Management Unit in the Corkscrew Regional Watershed Ecosystem in Naples, FL we spotted well over one hundred grunts, many gathered in “pods” and sitting on logs or floating in the duckweed. Most of them did an alligator cannonball at the sound or sight of our presence. Each one guarded by a mama gator, seen or unseen. 

Ugly Baby - The Wood Stork

It’s generally considered bad behavior to scream at birds and yet there I was flailing my arms and yelling at an endangered Wood Stork (Mycteria americana) who was gracefully flying near my home. Everyone knows that the White Stork (Ciconia ciconia) brings babies and pickles, but the bald, black-headed, wrinkle-skinned Wood Stork brings ugly babies and my wife was due in two weeks.

The Wood Stork is an opportunistic nester. Too little water and their diet of fish, frogs and invertebrates may dry up. Too much water and the same dietary cast of characters can easily disperse, making it tough to for nesting parents to capture enough food to feed themselves, let alone their young. To raise two chicks they require nearly 450 pounds of food throughout the nesting season. If they can’t find food, they don’t nest and if the season goes sour they may abandon a nest.

In the air they are remarkably elegant, using long, broad wings to soar on thermal updrafts and swoop in to marshes and swamps. On approach they drop down their landing gear, a pair of thin, sturdy legs that reminds me of the wheels on a plane. Up close they have a face that looks like a vulture. Although younger storks retain a slightly feathered head, “stork-patterned baldness” sets in upon adulthood, providing an easier feeding experience as they dunk their smooth, domed heads in the water to seek prey.

I love Wood Storks. I can’t help but point one out every time I see one. I’m just superstitious and on this particular day as the white and black bird glides over the pines and nears my lawn, my soon-to-be parent instinct leads to my maniacal “nooooooooooooooooooooooo”. It works and the bird majestically takes a slightly altered flight line.

Theodoro Corradino was born on 1/31/2011. If he’s anything but the most beautiful baby I wouldn’t know. I would imagine the Wood Storks think the same of their hatchlings.

Ugly Babies

If the Stork is said to bring babies - the Wood Stork brings the ugly babies. I had a great opportunity to float up the Caloosahatchee and check on a bird rookery on an island in the middle of the river. There are an estimated 10,000 nesting pairs of endangered Wood Storks in all of Florida with at least 50 nests on this tiny mangrove island. Presumably raccoons and other nest predators can not swim out this far, making this an ideal location for not only Wood Storks, but Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Anhingas, Great Blue Herons and Black-crowned Night Herons (more on them later).Standing nearly 4 feet tall with a wingspan over 5 feet, this huge wading bird uses its massive beak to probe for fish, crustaceans, insects and even baby gators in the shallow waters in and around the Everglades and other Florida wetlands. When the water levels are right - Wood Storks nest, but during droughts when water is absent and little prey is available they will not nest or abandon nests if they can't collect 400+ lbs of fish for themselves and their young during the nesting season. (I have yet to see the scales they use to weigh their food...) If the water level is too high and prey species can easily disperse - feeding is again complicated and nesting may not occur. Their bald heads and long beaks may not win them any bird beauty pageants but in flight they are gorgeous. I'm using a Canon 40D with a 300mm zoom which allows me to see details that I hadn't noticed before. Check out the peach-colored band on the underside of the wing feathers. I had thought in the past it was simply sunlight coming through the wing. Not so!The nests are made of twigs and branches. They lay 3-4 eggs which hatch in about a month. They fledge (leave the nest) in about 2 months. The drought and human manipulation of the water cycle here in Florida has caused some of the Wood Stork populations to shift breeding to earlier in the season when food is plentiful. Birds at the Corkscrew Swamp were nesting in November while these birds should wrap up nesting in a few weeks. Based on birds flying in from the Northeast - we think they are foraging in the Babcock Wilderness Area a few miles away. While Wood Storks may bring ugly human babies to unsuspecting parents, there is no doubt that their downy white babies are quite adorable. Give them a few months. They'll be bald and goofy looking too.

Big Mama - Angry Gator

True for most any species of wildlife that exhibits maternal care - get in between mama and her babies and look out. When the mama in question has 80 teeth and can exert 1200+ lbs of pressure per square inch - its best to keep your distance.

Lake Trafford in Immokolee, Florida has an estimated 4000 alligators in about 1600 acres of wetland. Probably the highest density of alligators per acre in the world. Alligators range in size here from hatchlings to 15 footers and around the lake there are quite a few mama gators ferociously defending there young. Right now the lake is down about 6 feet from normal due to a 2 year drought and 2 summers of dredging. Normally the water should be close to the base of the dock seen below but you would have a good 5 foot plummet into the water from the dock if you tripped.

Mamas have had to find new nesting areas on the lake and two nests in particular are a little too close as far as the marina is concerned. One is just beneath the dock where we once loaded people onto airboats. They've blocked it off and only I can go out there. Apparently they think I'm responsible.

These pups were born last September and have been so well protected by mom that they appear to be emaciated. Let them out to eat mom! They grow about a foot a year but these little ones are tiny. Mom usually keeps them close by for the first 2-3 years of their lives until they are old enough to defend for themselves. The 8-foot alligator below was resting under the dock I was standing on. She wasn't waiting for me to fall in so she could eat me, but instead uses the dock for shelter. There are enough fish and other alligators in the lake for her to eat. But when airboats pass by she lunges, hisses and growls. She must be quite proud. She's scares off 10 boats a day.
This mama has enjoyed the low water. She was able to make a den in the embankment. She can crawl in head first and turn her entire 7 foot body around inside. She had babies from 2005, 2006 and 2007 under her protection. We'll assume they are all hers.
She too growls and lunges. She's a good mama. In the next few weeks it will be breeding season and not long after she'll make her nest in the woods, scraping together grass and mud and laying anywhere from 20-80 eggs. Heat from decomposing plant material warms the eggs and helps them develop. If there's not enough moisture for this process - mama pees on the nest. Incubation lasts 65 or so days and they usually hatch out in late July or August. Then the growling starts all over again.