I grew up on the Indian River Lagoon, really  the Banana River side, and the ocean side of that .We lived on the barrier bar just south of Cape Canaveral.  The Spanish called it Cape Cane break.   It was the 1960’s and life was a great deal different then.  I had a Southern gentleman for a father and two older brothers that I looked up to. My mother was an elegant woman who ruled the house and the English language, she would never have approved of the way I ended the last sentence.  I have two brothers and three sisters, with whom I share the “New Zealand” factor, We look at life with different eyes. As a youth in the 1960's my focus was not on the popular thoughts and actions.  While the rest of the world was focusing on the war and political strife, I was not interested.  There was a different world for me. What were then considered useless lands and wastelands are now recognized as wetlands.  My own fascination of these swamps grew as I did.  I grew to love this other world to see in it a life force that was unrivaled.  It was in the swamps and marshes of the Indian and Banana River.  We lived on the edge of a cove in the Banana River on the beach side.  The old maps called this Shorty's pocket. 

 

 

 The Indian River Lagoon, as it has now come to be called, was the host to so much of the wildlife of Florida that I could only watch in amazement as it paraded by.  The rafts of ducks that came through on the fall cold fronts are not there.  The first thorough were the little green winged teal then came the mallards.  Then the pintails and then the scaups were mixed with them all.  Not now though, much of the fish and game that I saw then has now disappeared. I saw a teal this last year. One small individual from what were once thousands. The pintails have disappeared.  The Ruddy ducks, no more.  Many of the mallards I see are the dishonest ones that no longer make the trip to the north and back.  They prefer to hang out with the local Florida duck or the Mottled duck, spending the hot summers in our Florida marshes..  They eat fish too, not the vegetarian diet they came to us with before.  When you taste these lazy ducks you know right away, these are the fish eaters.  The biologists call these feral ducks, I wonder how the ducks feel about the label.

  Not all of the stories have ended in disaster though.  As an instance, I was proud to be one of the few that knew where to find a nest of Snowy Egrets.  The birds once hunted for plumage, the ones with the golden feet.  I called them the “Sneaker Birds” as the yellow feet were their one distinguishing feature.  

 These were so rare that wildlife photographers came from all over the world to try to take a picture of a disappearing species.  They came armed with cameras, portable blinds and loads of other equipment that I had no idea the use.  I could usually find these shy white birds within a week or so of searching.  Today these birds are common enough to find near almost any waterway in Florida.  The stories of hunting them to near extinction in the 1920’s are well known.  That they are in such abundance now is a tribute to the conservation efforts of many.  Not the strident NIMBYism but the calm informed common sense of "leave them alone for while" attitudes.   Some of the writers of the conservation movement are among my heroes.  Some of my favorite authors today include John Mc Phee and Adapold Leopold.

Rookeries for herons are familiar sites around the edges of Florida.  Many of the birds population remain constant.   To find a rookery all you have to do is watch the sky a while.  They waould circle then drop down below the treeline.  This was either food or a nesting site. There would be a huge number of birds all sitting in the mangroves, the aerial activity gave away the location . The herons slow flapping flight seems to be a special effect from the movies.  How can they stay in the air? They should flap more often than that.   The “Po’ Joe” as I called them, or more properly the Great Blue Heron, is still around today in what seems to be the same numbers. Birds were a constant in the wetlands, hunting for the food, resting in the nurseries and flying from one place to another. As a boy, I was reading Seton's “Wild Animals I have Known “.  This was my text book for learning nature appreciation.  Some one forgot to tell me this was in old book.  It rang to the creatures I was seeing.  I also was trying to catch these wild animals.  I learned how to make a figure four trigger for box traps from my father.  I was not successful at any of my trapping endeavors.  The raccoons were too smart.

 

 One of the birds that I have come to appreciate later in life is the anhinga, a truly amazing bird that seems to fly underwater.  Made with a twist of fate, in that it does not have enough oil on its feathers to keep them waterproof.  I imagine this is as twisted as becoming a marine biologist only to find that you are prone to seasickness.  The anhinga fishes for food under water.  It is quick with it’s neck to spear minnows and other small life. The tail feathers spread out underwater as a steering mechanism.  This bird moves through the underwater world as if it belonged.  After eating, the bird then scrambles onto a branch or river bank with wings spread to dry out the feathers before flying. Adapting to it’s circumstances with grace. A bird with real style.

 

 

I can remember reading books by Yule Gibbons and Rachel Carson and shaking my head that these people were so worried.  Rachel’s strident call for action seemed a little too strident for me.  Mr. Gibbons ”Stalking the Blue Eyed Clam” was one that I enjoyed but puzzled over.  He talked of walking over oysters to get seaweed to eat.  Yeah, I thought, you can get seaweed, and then eat it, but what about those oysters that you complained that cut your feet?  Haven’t you ever had those fresh from the salt water pried open and served up on a plate?  The salt water dripping out, the musty smell of a well tuned salt marsh filling your nose.  Now that is what is right with the world.  The mangroves that grew prolifically around the shores were a perfect place for many of the oyster beds and fish that I knew.  I knew the mullet that lazed around in the shallows jumping into the air seemingly at whim, not because they were being chased but just for the joy of jumping.

 

 

These were two foot long monsters that were not afraid of anything.  There was a story that Dad used to tell of setting up a sheet on a frame in a small boat and rowing out into the cove at night. A kerosene camping lantern was used to illuminate the white sheet and it attracted the mullet to it.  They started to jump around, as the number of fish grew, soon they were jumping into the boat.  The boat was swamped before they brought it back to the shore.  Fishing without nets and hooks. It always drew much laughter from my father as he retold this story.  The mullet were a source of food for many people, some considered it a “trash fish” meant for poor folks to eat.

 

 

 The local restaurant used them as an appetizer for each meal.    The “Surf” is now one of the fine dining establishments of Florida.  They still use the mullet in their dishes. The commercial fishermen would come late in the evening pulled by the lure of the mullet’s hangout.  They had kerosene lanterns to work by. They would drive into the cove with their outboards, when they spotted the jumping mullet they would cut the motor and break out the long oars.   They would set the gill nets out in circles, some as much as a thousand feet in diameter, setting them by rowing around the school of mullet quietly.  Then once the ends of the gill net were together they would push to the middle of the net circle and rattle the oars in the oarlocks.  This scared the fish outward and into the net.  The old men would watch and wait sometimes waiting for a half hour before starting to pull in the net. They knew by the way the floats moved before they started whether they would net any real catch.  Starting at one side they would pull in the net and drop it carefully in the bottom of the boat in a design that would feed out next time without a snag.  As the fish came over the side caught in the coarse nets they were pushed through the nets and then expertly flipped to the bow where ice awaited them in an open bin. The old men would be glad for a youngster to come out in a canoe and talk, that is, if you waited till it was the right time, after the net was set.

I could not afford the long nets and was confined to catching mullet with a cast net.  The Cast net is a wonderful Pacific Island invention, a 6 foot wide skirt of net is flung out over fish.  A web of string work on the inside draw the skirt edges together trapping the fish.  The dance that starts the cast net throw is a ballet of folding, draping, spinning and releasing in a way that the net slowly spins to a fully open circle. This all happens out over where the fish are lazing around in shallow water.  These nets were tied from cotton string.  Later as the plastics took over the world monofilamaent line was used.   That first time I used the nylon string net was a shock, I threw the net into the boat and it bounced back out.   Well it didn’t really… but it seemed to.   As a boy, I once caught a Tricolor Heron in my cast net.  It was a surprise for both the bird and I. The heron may have been innocently flying by and gotten ensnared in my net, but what a coincidence. I think we were both trying to catch the same bait fish; nonetheless he wound up in my cast net, a fluttering angry tangle.