Pool Wildlife
For a dozen or more years, I’ve been doing my best to get into the Atlantic Recreation Center pool at least twice a week to get some exercise. Fernandina Beach is blessed with competent and friendly water aerobics instructors and a tribe of their followers. Some people in the pool are totally focused on getting the toughest workout they can bear. Others come for the socialization with their peers, who are aging along with them. And some, like me, also keep an eye out on the sky and trees and buildings around us. This place is alive!
Gaja, my primary instructor, always has a watchful eye on me, just one among 30 or so others in the pool, but the one most likely to disrupt the class. I do my best, but I just cannot help but make quips as we exercise, extracting chuckles from my pool mates and admonishments from Gaja. And, my eyes are usually roving up in the sky and into the nearby trees, and even on the Rec Center buildings themselves. A whole slice of the animal kingdom surrounds us, and I don’t hesitate to point things out.
The live oaks and pine trees around the pool host pileated and red-bellied woodpeckers that the birdwatchers among us notice as they come and go. Those of us exercising in the deep end of the pool also have a wonderful view of a hole in a concrete block in the building, where a pipe once existed. Every spring, this hole becomes a hotbed of activity. A pair of bluebirds nest there, and, over the weeks, we can see the parents coming and going. Eventually, some lucky exercisers even see the fledglings perched along the roofline. All of this, of course, is invisible to Gaja or the other pool participants -- only those of us in the very deep end can view this show while the “shallow” people wonder what all the fuss is about at the other side of the pool.
The Rec Center buildings also host families of chimney swifts that all of us can see and hear in the air above us. As we exercise, we can watch them leaving the chimney in front of us, and squeaking their high-pitched cries as they circle in the air, looking for the insects that make up their entire diet. The many old buildings in Fernandina provide ample places for chimney swifts to nest. When Bucko was a park ranger at Fort Clinch State Park, he sometimes had to pick up young chimney swifts that fell down one of the chimneys in the fort and landed on the floor. But chimney swifts are designed for such episodes. Their long claws are only suitable for clinging and climbing and all Bucko needed to do to rescue them was to put them inside the wall of the chimney and up they climbed again. At the Rec Center the bottoms of the chimneys have been sealed to prevent just these mishaps.
The chimney swifts are tiny birds, dwarfed by the other birds we see flying above the pool. Gulls and crows are regular sights. Ospreys often fly overhead and sometimes even a bald eagle. Years ago, I was contacted by Recreation Department staff who found something strange in the pool, a skeleton of sorts. I took it to the University of Florida Natural History Museum and the experts in the zooarchaeology department identified it as a bonnethead shark. It must have been dropped by an osprey, is everyone’s best guess.
These days we are sometimes also delighted at the sight of a swallow-tailed kite soaring overhead -- with its graceful movements and slender form, it puts us aerobic exercisers to shame. These beautiful birds of prey spend their winters in South America and reach Florida and other parts of the southeastern U.S. in the spring to breed here. Keep your eyes on the open skies around us and you just might see them too, before they finish up their breeding season and head for points south.
Most of the pool people don’t notice the activities of the surrounding birds, but boy do they notice insects. At the first sign of biting no-see-ums, there is a mad rush to the pool edges to share the insect repellent that some prepared participants have provided for us. The presence of a wasp causes a minor panic as people splash at it and try to chase it away. Lately, ants have invaded the pool deck where our instructors are stationed, causing their own ruckus.
It’s amazing that I get any exercise accomplished with all this drawing my attention. But Gaja is vigilant. Whenever she notices my distraction, she creates a task for me. “Pat, count the next moves,” and I am drawn into the fold again. All of this: the exercise, the socialness, the wildlife and the instructors, keep drawing me back. And the weeks and months and years just keep ticking by.
This summer there has been a temporary hiatus from the Recreation Center Pool while the restrooms there are being remodeled, and the noise has driven us to the smaller pool at the MLK facility, which has sadly often become uncomfortably hot -- sometimes 89 degrees -- way too hot for me. I long for the days I can happily visit my friends in the Rec Center Pool once again.
Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D., is a zoologist on Amelia Island. She welcomes your nature questions and observations. [email protected]
