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Summertime is tropical fruit time. It is hot and humid, too much for most plants, and humans. Those of us who are here get the sweet reward of mango season. My mango tree is Valencia Pride variety, purchased at Fairchild Tropical Gardens. They recommended it as a good variety for Key Largo. It produces in June/July and gets rave reviews from everyone who has tasted the fruit.  Squirrels move around with reckless ease, as if the gravity does not apply to them. In fruit season, I monitor the tree daily, checking for mangos that may be on the verge of ripeness. The object is to pick the fruit before the resident grey squirrel finds it. One day in late June I spied a grey squirrel near the mango tree. At the same moment the squirrel, who was just a short leap away from the mango tree, stopped in its tracks. It heard me and it remained motionless in an attempt to hide from sight. Some fruit were showing signs of ripeness, so I picked a half dozen that were a few days shy of being perfectly ripe. Valencia Pride mangoes have a color change from their unripe solid green state, to yellowish gold and reddish orange as they ripen. The fruit is considered mature when the end of the fruit away from the stem broadens out. Luckily the fruit ripens in stages, which allows the fruit to stay on the tree until you are ready for the next batch.  This squirrel is making noise, flicking its tail because I was near the tree and it viewed me as a threat.  A squirrel’s front teeth are always growing, so they must constantly keep chewing to wear them down so they don’t grow into their lower jaw. Their preferred foods include bark, berries, seeds and acorns. My bushy tailed rodent visitor will get its share of fruit no matter how vigilant I am. It will find a fruit and nibble on it, then move onto another fruit and do the same. Squirrel proofing your fruit trees is not impossible. Some people wrap their tree in netting. Others set out motion-activated sprinklers. One year I wrapped each hanging fruit in a brown paper bag. That was crazy, and labor intensive, and I couldn’t see the fruit when they were in the bags. I’d go out there and find a paper bag with a mushed fruit in it on the ground. I kinda feel sorry for the squirrels, and I would never do harm to the one or two that come visit. One way to lessen their impact is by cleaning up any downed and rotting fruit and by providing an alternative food source. Unfortunately birds and squirrels share the same diet, so you may be faced with squirrels raiding the bird feeder.  My prize mangos begin to turn from solid green to shades of yellow gold and reddish orange as they ripen on the tree. Squirrels are common visitors in the urban landscape, so much so that we seldom pay attention to them. My yard is just one stop on a circuit which spans from tree to tree in its neighborhood range. The local squirrels never have to leave the treetops in order to get to my yard. Squirrels get hit by cars when they cross the road. The iNaturalist database is full of pictures of “flat-squirrels” with the sighting location as Crocodile Lake/Card Sound Road, a fragmented habitat with a 55 mph highway running through the middle of it.  The squirrel stops in its tracks, just a short leap away from the mango tree. It heard me and it remained motionless in an attempt to hide from sight. Since the squirrel spends much of its life in the trees, it’s obviously very good at navigating from tree to tree in search of its food. It’s like an arboreal super-highway. On gardening day we were trimming the green and silver buttonwood hedge running the length of the backyard. It is a mature hedge with many thick connecting branches. The squirrel had a path along the border, and the daredevil squirrel regularly leapt from branch to branch on its path. On this day we heard a crash, and something tumbling through the foliage. Much bigger than a golf ball, I thought. The next thing we saw was a squirrel emerging from the brush, and the look on its face was priceless, as it processed what had just happened. The squirrel looked at me as if to say “Are you responsible for this?” The squirrel had mindlessly leapt for a branch that had been recently removed, an unexpected alteration to it’s world. The squirrel also gets a bad rap for being forgetful. Squirrels are credited for planting many oak and walnut forests, as they bury their food cache for later, and then forget that they did so, and the resulting forests grown from the seeds are attributed to squirrels. The year 2026 produced a bumper crop on my mango tree, and I felt superstitious, since the last prolific crop on my property was in 1992, the summer that hurricane Andrew decimated North Key Largo, Homestead and vicinity. That June before we lost the tree in the August hurricane, my mother-in-law Helen’s mango tree was loaded with fruit. I peeled and chopped the fruit, and helped her make several cases of mango chutney, using the original Hayden recipe. To this day I label my mango chutney “Mrs. Atkinson’s” as a tribute to Helen Atkinson Ellis.    Mango Bread Recipe Card 
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Critters articles are inspired by the photographs I’ve taken, or will take when prompted by the editor, as is with this story about the Mourning Dove. The editor sent me a Facebook post illustrated with a beautiful Mourning Dove… and the caption had “Keys” written all over it… “this bird thrives with basic amenities such as gravel driveways and shallow water.” That crunchy coral rock driveway is actually health food, as the doves need to swallow small stones to help them grind up the seeds in their gizzard.  The Eurasian collared dove are a pale, grayish tan. I looked in my library, and I didn’t have pictures, probably because these doves were so common, I overlooked them. No problem, they are always in my yard. In just a few minutes I had obtained photos for the article. I uploaded them to the website iNaturalist, a site where I load my nature photos for positive identification. The online community responded within a day, identifying my dove as “Eurasian-Collared Dove.” (Streptopelia decaocto) or ECD. A learning moment… I thought the ECD were Mourning Doves.  Here Eurasian collared doves feeding in groups on the ground. ECD have plump bodies, small heads, long tails and pale, chalky, grayish-tan feathers. The ECD gets it’s name from the half round black collar on the back of its neck. Mourning Doves have a long pointed tail with white outer feathers; they have a fleck of black markings on their wings and are a warmer, pinkish-brown. After more research I learned that aside from their coloration and markings, they had different, but similar calls. I was incorrect in thinking the koo-KOO-koo call was of the Mourning Dove. But no! The koo-KOO-koo is of the ECD, and is shorter and more frequent than the Mourning Dove’s call of coo-AHH, coo-coo-coo which comes from the male sitting on his “cooing perch” letting females know he is available.  The ECD species name “decaocto” comes from Greek mythology. Decaocto was a servant girl transformed by the Gods into a dove, to escape her dreadful treatment; the dove’s mournful cry references her former life. Obtaining photos of the Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) was becoming a greater challenge. Each time I’d venture out, I’d return with more ECD photos. I was beginning to think the Mourning Dove did not exist. A birder told me that ECD definitely outnumber the Mourning Doves, but to look at the power lines or maybe construction sites to find them foraging on the ground.  Mourning doves have fleck of black markings on their wings and are a warmer, pinkish-brown. After several days of hunting I finally spotted a few Mourning Doves in my yard. The Mourning Doves were under the bird feeder, cleaning up the seeds dropped there. Doves are the perfect clean-up crew. While the Cardinals and Blue Jays are careless feeders, allowing seeds to drop, the doves are content to forage on the ground below. A few more Mourning Doves were spotted on the loose brown mulch, their coloration made them blend in very well. They were very skittish, kept their distance and took flight when I got too close, but luckily I got some photos. The ECD are invasive and becoming more common. The ECD have come a long way from their origin in India around 1600; from there they migrated to Turkey, and by 1945 had made it to Germany. By 1955 they had spread to England and most of Europe. The ECD population here stems from a 1970 Bahamian pet shop escape of about 50 doves, that made their way to Florida around 1980, and with up to six broods a year, they rapidly colonized North America. They have adapted very well to living among people, and are easy to spot if you take the time to look.  You will often see Mourning doves grazing on the ground for seed  This story is important to tell because it points to the level of awareness and appreciation we have as humans for the natural world. Think of what happens when you go outside with awareness: Step number one, you hear something or see movement in the brush. Step two, you try to identify it… it is something small, what color is it? … a lizard? or is it a bird? Step three… you ask what is it doing? Is it feeding? It is eating a worm? What kind of worm…. And so forth. We all lie on some part of the “curiosity spectrum.” Now when I hear a dove, I am trying to decide if it is koo-KOO-koo (ECD) or coo-AHH, coo-coo-coo (Mourning dove). And to make life interesting we also have White-winged doves, the Common Ground Dove, and White Crowned Pigeons in our area. In time, as we get to explore more in nature, we become more knowledgeable. It all starts with appreciation, active observing, or even a challenge.  To prey or to pray…. That is the question. English is a very confusing language. Both words sound the same, yet present very different meanings, all depending on the context in which they are used. There is preying and praying in a photograph of a Great egret fishing beside a makeshift cross. An egret preys on sea critters, where locals pray on Sunday morning.  A Great egret preys on sea critters, while locals come here to pray. Around the turn of the 21st Century... about 23 years ago... a restaurant and watering hole existed in Rock Harbor, called the Mandalay. A casual spot with cold beer, peel and eat shrimp and views of the ocean and boat moorings. A cross erected at the point was the focal point for Sunday morning open air church services. Around the turn of the 21st Century… about 23 years ago… a restaurant and watering hole existed in Rock Harbor, called the Mandalay. A casual spot with cold beer, peel and eat shrimp and views of the ocean and boat moorings. A cross erected at the point becomes the focus of worshippers who sit at those same tables and chairs during Sunday morning open air church services. The Great Egret (Ardea alba egretta) is a three foot tall, long-legged wading bird that is often confused with a similar looking white bird the 'Great White Heron' (the white form of Great Blue Heron.) Though both birds are herons, a simple way of differentiating between the two big white birds is the Great egret has black legs, and the Great white heron’s legs are yellow. The male Great egret also sports delicate ornamental feathers down it’s back when in mating plumage. Those beautiful feathers not only attract female mates, but nearly led to a human-driven extinction of the species. Around the turn of the 20th Century, a ton and a half of Great egret plumes, known as “aigrettes” were sold in London to decorate women’s hats. In terms of birds slaughtered, 200,000 adult birds, multiplied by 2-3 times, counting the eggs abandoned in the nest, became prey to the millinery industry.  The Great Egret by John James Audubon is shown in the marshes, preying on crayfish. In 1902 John James Audubon worried that “the long plumes of this bird being in request for ornamental purposes, they are shot in great numbers while sitting on their eggs, or soon after the appearance of the young.” It is hard to imagine a time when birds were so plentiful, they could be sacrificed for vanity and decoration, rather than be admired for their beauty and role in the natural world. The modern day National Audubon Society’s logo is of a Great egret in flight, representing the organization’s role in enacting conservation laws to protect the species and ensure it’s return.  The Great egret can be found in fresh or salt water habitat. Here a flock of egrets and other long-legged wading birds, hunt for fish, frogs and other small fare. Great egrets are equally at home in fresh or salt water environments. They have also been successful at adapting to life in an increasingly developed world. Egrets can often be seen foraging in roadside ditches, or along suburban roads. They typically stand motionless, and with keen eyesight that can look straight ahead as well as downward, patiently wait until unsuspecting prey comes their way. Then with lightning fast reflexes, the long necked egret strikes with a jab of their sharp bill. To quote Winnie the Pooh … “Which is more important, the voyage or the destination?” Piglet replied “The company.” For me the voyage and the company are of equal importance, especially in the Florida Keys when wildlife appears.  I had to do a double take, was this standing bird a new variety of plastic yard art in the genre of the pink flamingo? Then it moved, revealing a real live egret preying on lizards in the hedge. Sometimes the voyage is the destination, such as the day I photographed an egret hunting beside the road. I stopped and silently observed; luckily I was in a golf cart and not worried about traffic. I watched the scene unfold through the lens, because that is what photographers do. And bam! The once motionless egret produced a nice lizard snack from within the foot high greenery. If I hadn’t stopped, I wouldn’t have known. The voyage and the company of the egret became the experience. It also became the experience for the man in cart stopped behind me. I apologized… he waved that off, “You’re working” he responded. Nice man. So how about the people that don’t venture out in nature, or never pay attention to wildlife? That is part of why I write, to pique the interest of the unknowing or unaware. You cannot fault someone for doing the wrong thing if they do not have the facts or the understanding.  Suddenly the egret darts into the foliage and emerges with his lizard prize.  The Great egret walks with its neck extended and wings held close.  According to the prevailing view in 1900, a man could kill a bird for its feathers in order to put food on the table. The context of his preying was to feed his family, and there were plenty of birds.
How does that relate to the year 2026? There is an unrelenting population influx to Florida. It is the wild west in many respects, where every man has a right to do what he wants with his property. But will those decisions be morally right? The people of the State of Florida should enact a state-wide comprehensive plan encompassing development, roads, housing, and quality of life, before adding more people to the mix. A healthy environment means better quality of life, and happier people. Prior environmental commitments such as “Florida Forever” should be funded, and projects completed. Is that too much to ask? Maybe it is time to pray for something greater. |
CAROL ELLIS
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August 2026
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