Ghost Hunters, Part II

There is no shortage of danger in the Everglades. Our quest to find the rare and endangered Ghost Orchid (Dendrophylax lindenii) in the swamps of South Florida has led us to a tiny slough in a remote area of the Big Cypress National Preserve.

I have seen one Ghost Orchid in the wild – the now famous Corkscrew Swamp “Super Ghost” that can be seen at Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples, FL. It’s the only orchid whose location is not a secret. It’s unusual in that it was discovered growing forty-five up on the trunk of a Bald Cypress. It also showed off eleven blooms at one point and could be seen for several weeks straight.

Ghost Orchids are most commonly found growing on Pop Ash or Pond Apple trees, offer one bloom for a couple weeks in the summer and can be found floating like an apparition just a few inches from the tree and just above eye level.

Our quest involved wading hip-deep in cool water from tree trunk to tree trunk, looking for the signature spider-like tendrils of the Ghost Orchid. Unseen underwater logs impeded progress while floating debris had to be cast aside as we poked our way around the swamp with hiking poles. Here there may be dragons of the Alligator variety but slow, methodical probing of the area around us would most likely encourage any restless reptiles to move elsewhere.

Within a few minutes of entering the slough we had found our first Ghost Orchid plant, an amassment of green, cord-like vegetation with distinct white-dashes, giving each “branch” the appearance of a divided highway. Our next plant offered success in the form of a single, ethereal bloom seemingly suspended in midair.

Ghost Orchids are pollinated by the Giant Sphinx Moth (Cocytius antaeus), a long-tongued night flyer that sips sweet nectar from the unusually long nectary of the Ghost Orchid. By visiting the bloom, the moth unknowingly rubs it’s head on the anther cap or pollinium of the flower. If it visits another flower it has the rare opportunity of assisting in pollination. From there the Ghost casts out wind-borne seeds to hopefully begin the next generation.

After several water-logged hours of listening to the incessant buzzing and biting of “swamp angels”, navigating around softball-sized woods spiders and watching for Cottonmouths and other critters we had the good fortune of discovering over fifty ghost orchids with four in bloom.

My Shangri-la exists but you have to believe in Ghosts. 

Florida Panther at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary

I still have yet to see one in the wild but check out the video taken by a volunteer at the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples, Fl.

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.

Jungle Pete and the Canoes of Antiquity

The cypress log jutted from the water's surface, stuck in the mucky bottom of Lake Trafford. In June, the lake had receded to the lowest levels in recorded history. Partly due to lack of rain, partly caused by the dredging project. But here was the anachronistic log. Out of time and out of place. There are no cypress trees for miles and no streams or rivers flow into the lake; only out.

The airboat captain slowed enough for me to get a good look and sped off without a word. Later he would tell me that the log was most likely a Seminole Indian canoe from their time living in this area over the last 2 centuries. Lake Trafford is in Immokalee, a town whose name is Seminole for "My Home" and was just that in the not so distant past and here was a potential remnant of their lives, exposed by the lack of water.

Cypress wood is relatively rot resistant and Seminoles had learned from their Calusa predecessors how to hollow out the logs and make 12+ foot pole boats for pushing about in the swamps and marshes of the Everglades. Here was history, but the presence of it was being kept quiet. If anyone were to find out, they may stop the restoration project here and the lake could lapse into a state of anoxia (no oxygen) which would kill most life in the lake.

It's not unusual for me to repeat lines in my head from my favorite movie Raiders of the Lost Ark - and here I found myself saying "It belongs in a museum". I understand the consequences but certainly reasonable people could compromise here and we could save the canoe and protect the lake.

My next trip out on the airboat we noticed two more canoes sticking out of the mud. One only a few feet long with obvious tell-tale burn marks and another nearly 5 feet with parts obscured by muddy water.


I called a rep for the Collier County's Historical & Archeological Preservation Board later that week, knowing I could jeopardize the restoration project and potentially my job. The state investigated and my next trip out, there were at least 7 sites marked off. Instead of zipping by, the airboat driver carefully navigated closer to one and explained that he had been asked to mark the sites! So everyone was on board with protecting the canoes. But these were not just Seminole canoes; these canoes are estimated to be over 2000 years old and belonging to the Calusa themselves! The state is currently in the process of doing carbon dating to get a more precise date, but this find is now forcing historians to rethink many of the theories of the Calusas. (For more info CLICK HERE) Apparently they navigated from the ocean, through the Corkscrew Swamp and inland to Lake Trafford where the inhabited the area for quite some time. Long enough to generate a shell mound near the lake that will be investigated soon.

from http://www.pineislandfl.com/

Before the state could get out to the canoes, one of them had disappeared. Thinking it was one of theirs, the Seminoles, with their proud cultural heritage grabbed it in the dark of night! The state asked for it back and soon enough it will be in a museum. Indiana Jones would be proud.

The Ghost Orchid: The Epiphyte of Your Life

Chances are you will never see a Ghost Orchid in the wild. Rare in nature and often growing in difficult to access places, this seemingly ethereal and ephemeral epiphyte can be found in the Everglades and most specifically in the Fakahatchee Strand State Park where I take my tours. Epiphytes are plants that grow on other plants without being parasitic. They essentially use a host tree for support as the swampy soils and thick canopy make life on the forest floor tough.

The 20,000 acre park has the highest diversity of orchids in North America, but the Ghost Orchid is one of the most rare and in fact we rarely see orchids at all. Sadly, orchid thieves poach the plants from their host tree and sell them on the black market. You may have heard of the 1994 book the Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean based on the true story of a flower poacher in the Fakahatchee. Hollywood made an adaptation loosely based on the book with Nicholas Cage. It was called Adaptation.

Anyway. The orchids are few and far between, but 3 weeks ago, birders at Audubon's Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples, (just north of the Fakahatchee), were searching for Owls when they noticed a 6-blossomed flower growing 60 feet up on the trunk of Bald Cypress! This was a first in that Ghost Orchids had not been found in this sizable sanctuary and no Ghost Orchid had ever been found above 26 feet from the forest floor or on a cypress! That deserves one more!! They've had experts definitively say this is a Ghost Orchid, but who knows, maybe it's a whole new species not known to us.

I've not bothered to be concerned about ever seeing a Ghost Orchid. I just assumed I would never see one, but I headed out to Corkscrew and had the luck to see the most rare flower in North America.

The Sanctuary had spotting scopes to see the flowers which were blooming 100 feet from the boardwalk. My photos will pale in comparison to anyone with a telephoto, but I got a picture nonetheless through the scope.

The flowers bloom from June to August, with 1-10 flowers arising from nothing but roots attached to the cypress. Each flower blooms one after the other and they only last three weeks, so I arrived just in time. Once they go to seed, they drop bell pepper-sized seeds into the wind in the hope that one may land in an appropriate spot and begin to grow. It doesn't happen often.

They're called Ghost Orchid because they look like little dancing ghosts or jumping frogs which is why they have the less then stellar and less used name of Frog Orchid.

The flowers are so prized by orchid thieves, that the sanctuary has had to set up motion-sensing cameras and trip wires around the perimeter of the tree to protect it. There are already rumors of poachers plotting to steal them. Imagine getting caught and going to jail? What are you in for? "Stealing flowers".

I'll stick to photographs. This is one of those once in a lifetime experiences. Couldn't be more elated.