Aerial Adventures at Corkscrew

Flying might be one of the most unnatural things a human could do, besides scuba diving. I love scuba diving, so it is only natural that I find joy in flying. On commercial flights I’m the one smiling and laughing when the plane hits some turbulence that makes your stomach turn. So when I learned I’d be going on a wading bird flight in a small plane – a Cessna P210 – I was excited. When I was told we should expect turbulence, I was even more excited. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit apprehensive about motion sickness. I’d never had a problem with it before, but here I would be in a small plane taking tight turns and hitting the airborne equivalent of speed bumps, all while scanning the ground for wading birds, jotting notes, taking pictures, and staring through binoculars. People, including the pilot herself, advised taking Dramamine as a precaution before the flight. I decided to forgo any precautionary measures in favor of finding out for myself whether I would get sick or not.

The plane was a 6-seater, with two backseats, one middle, and a seat each for the pilot and copilot. Being the least essential non-navigating part of our 3-person team, I sat in the back, accompanied by two stuffed teddy bears I figured might provide a modicum of cushion in the event of a crash (or at least something to hold whilst screaming during the rapid descent). Kidding! With our research technician Lee in the copilot seat and a lively woman with 40 years of experience in the pilot’s seat, we were ready for takeoff.

We were wheels-up at 0932, quickly climbing to our cruising altitude of 1,000 feet. Next to touching down, taking off and climbing is my favorite part of a flight. The moment the wheels leave the ground is almost magical, and then there’s nothing below your seat but air and increasingly tiny objects tethered to the ground by gravity. All it takes is fuel, engine-driven propellers, and a craft of the right morphology to best gravity, and oh what a feeling it is to be free of it (figuratively of course, you’re not exactly floating up there).

 Anyway, our survey was really quite simple in method and objective – we were to fly around agricultural areas until we located a group of wading birds, circle and take notes, pictures, and a GPS point, and wash, rinse, repeat until our general survey area (Naples vicinity) was covered. We saw about a dozen groups, with the majority clustered around active farm implements such as excavators digging out canals or small ponds and tractors tilling fields.

Wading birds clustered around an excavator

It was strange at first, seeing Great Egrets (Ardea alba) and Woodstorks (Mycteria americana) crowding the ever-moving mechanical arm of an excavator, each trying to get first crack at whatever the claw-fringed bucket managed to scrape up. This unexpectedly beneficial interaction diminished the hard work of locating food through either tacto-location or patiently waiting for a fish to swim within striking distance. We saw group after group of wading birds occupied in this way, while the natural swamps and wetlands remained largely unfrequented. I have no doubt the wading birds will return to these areas once they start to dry down, for the lowering water levels will concentrate prey populations and increase foraging efficiency. But for now, it seems as though these farmlands, the middle ground between Florida’s natural areas and concrete-encrusted developments, may play a more important role in the conservation of these birds than we thought.

Photo taken between groups of wading birds to separate sets

With that in mind, we completed our aerial circuit and set our course to return to the Immokalee Regional Airport. Entertained as I was by the pilot’s tales of adventures across the country on the wings of this Cessna, I was sobered by the reality that aerial surveys like the one we had just completed were the cause for many accidental deaths in our field. Between 1937 and 2000, 66% of the 91 documented fatalities that occurred in wildlife research and management activities were the result of aviation accidents. As we neared the landing strip, our pilot warned of a bumpy landing. The slight wobble in the wings along with the slight queasiness I had acquired during our last loop of our 12^th and final group of wading birds returned my attention briefly to the protection the teddy bears probably would not offer in the event of a crash, but that didn’t stop a wide smile from settling on my face as the ground rushed closer. The moments leading up to the wheels finally leaving the sky and once again touching the Earth were tense with excitement and anticipation. We touched down much smoother than the pilot had warned, rapidly decelerating once all wheels were solidly in contact with the ground. We taxied to the small airport terminal, and with that, the flight was over. Those few airborne hours left me with a heightened respect for biologists that regularly conduct aerial surveys, and a somewhat better knowledge of how wading bird foraging habits have adapted in the face of habitat loss. I hope that these flights will continue so that we can provide information that may prove valuable to the conservation of wading birds. With any luck, I’ll get the chance to tag along again!

- Randi Bowman, Research Intern