Verdant Vulture - The Turkey Vulture

I offer you a green Turkey Vulture. The photo is real and untouched. I took it. I do apologize that it has the same blurred quality to it that most of the photos of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster have. A canal full of alligators separated me and the emerald-feathered bird and a zoom lens can only do so much.

There are no shortages of natural curiosities on the shores of Lake Trafford in Immokalee, FL. The 1600-acre lake has more alligator per acre than anywhere on the planet. Colorful Roseate Spoonbills, Purple Gallinules, Tri-Colored Herons and Little Blue Herons stalk the shoreline. The nearby marina is home to several exotic birds like Macaws, Cockatoos and an African Grey Parrot. So when I saw what I thought was a Peacock sipping water in front of a backdrop of Pond Apples (Annona glabra) and Alligator Flag (Thaliageniculata) it didn’t seem entirely out of place. As I approached, it quickly became clear that I had been fooled by a Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) in disguise.

© Pete Corradino

Turkey Vultures are so named because of the red, featherless skin on their head that is similar to the male Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Turkey Vulture feathers are black to brown with white markings underneath from the wing tips to the body. The legs are pink to white. This vulture was green. Closer inspection shows that feathers closest to the tail are almost entirely green while those closer to the shoulders are brown with green tips. The eye appears white but is sunken and desiccated suggesting an old or sick bird.

I wish I had an explanation. As the photo has been passed around, the theories include: splattered with paint on St. Patty’s Day (this blog was originally posted in March), inadvertently doused with liquid copper (an orange tree fungicide), a nutritional deficiency, stricken with a parasite or an escaped character from World of Warcraft. What do you think?

An Allergic Reaction to Suspense

If you’re the kind of person that has to peek under the Christmas tree before the day has arrived, go ahead and skip to the end. If you read the last page of a novel first or if you fast forward through the movie because you have to know “what is in the box!”, go ahead and skip to the end. I wouldn't want the suspense to kill you.

What is the fine specimen we have before us? It is a caterpillar entering the pupal stage before it becomes a butterfly. It has crawled up under a metal guardrail on a desolate road in the Everglades. Here it remains suspended, awaiting a transformative process that will entirely change its way of life. But which species will it become?

Brightly colored insects, reptiles and snakes are usually warning signs for predators to stay away. The caterpillars of this specie feed on passion flowers which cause them to be toxic.

While some predators ignore the warnings and suffer the consequences, others have adapted to the poison and can enjoy what most others can not. Will the fly on the bottom right of the caterpillar be one of those predators?

If the color wasn’t enough of a deterrent, the well-fortified exterior should repel the hungriest of predators. Surprisingly, the fierce looking spines are innocuous, flexible ornamentation that rounds out the repulsive costume.

Within a few days, the metamorphic process will conclude, the pupal casing will cleave and a beautiful butterfly will fly off, but which species?

If you skipped ahead from the opening paragraph, you’ve ruined it for everyone and now I won’t tell you what it is. But hey, what’s the fun of me telling you what is wrapped up in the package when it’s more fun to find out yourself.