CROSS CREEK

Sunrise over Lochloosa Lake:


Cypress trees of Orange Lake:






































Photo: © 2004 Jeffrey Berger

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings made her home in Cross Creek and wrote a book of memoirs of the same name, which became a motion picture of the same name. Her American classic, The Yearling, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1939. Cross Creek is literally where you cross over from Orange Lake to Lochloosa Lake, or vice versa depending upon which way the birds fly.

Raised in a small country town surrounded by farms and woodlands, I have a special fondness for places where childhoods are spent “wide-eyed and breathless before the miracle of bird and creature, of flowers and tree, of wind and rain and sun and moon.” Perhaps this explains my interest in Nature.

CORMORANTS AT DAWN

Double-Crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus)
Location: Cross Creek
Photo: © 2004 Jeffrey Berger

Like the anhinga, the double-crested cormorant is also an underwater swimmer that will find a perch and spread its wings to dry in the sun. Cormorants form large nesting colonies along with anhinga, egrets and herons.

IBIS IN THE MORNING

WHITE IBIS (Eudocimus albus)
Location: Cross Creek
Photo: © 2004 Jeffrey Berger

The nomadic white ibis is experienced in massive flocks like star clusters in the Milky Way. I found this flock foraging the grasses and sedges of Lochloosa Lake.

The ibis has bright white feathers with black wingtips and stands about two feet tall. The ibis is a tactile feeder that will use its thin orange decurved bill as a probe, sweeping it from side to side in shallow water. With the first touch of food, the bill snaps shut. The ibis nests near freshwater because their young are salt-stressed on marine cuisine.

A WETLANDS REFLECTION

JUVENILE:


ADULT:


American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)
Location: Cross Creek
Photos (above): © 2004 Jeffrey Berger

Florida is the birthplace of John Archibald Wheeler, the theoretical physicist who first coined the term “black hole.” What is the relationship between back holes and alligators, you ask? As this correspondent has often observed, Floridians have a morbid and peculiar fascination with large predatory reptiles, and black holes are the ultimate gators in the Universe. Black holes are long dead stars at the center of galaxies, so named because nothing - not even light - can escape their gravitational pull. Yet, black holes represent the ying and yang of cosmic death and rebirth. Our sun, the planets, and the elements of life are born from the detritus of long-dead stars.

The relationship between black holes and galaxies is like the bond between gators and birds. Nesting birds know instinctively that the patient and silent alligator offers a definitive defense against tree-climbing predators such as possums and raccoons.  In exchange, alligators know with equal instinct that tasty fledglings drop from treetops. Gators may be fearsome predators but they also make welcome protectors. To protect the breeding colony, nesting birds prefer the company of gators. Thus, gators play an vital role in the ecology of our wetlands.