Fish Spawning, Wrens Nesting on Santa Fe River, Florida

April 2011

 

            Walk through puddles of blue eyed grasses to the Santa Fe River’s edge for a spring treat: the translucent verdant water is littered with pools the spawning fish are making. Perfect circles are all about the size of your arms make when you make a circle in front of you. I’ve heard from the locals that it’s the male bream that darts in and out of the circle…protecting the eggs against predators? 

            Each spring that is not flood, we see these pools producing more fish for the river. As motor boats rush past in their attempt to get somewhere important up or down stream, I wonder the effect of wave action which isn’t supposed to be this rough on a little river running through the sand…that is before man came here.

            If I do swim off bank instead of at the Ichetucknee downriver half a bend, I try not to step in these pools, wondering too the effect of my presence on these developing creatures.

 

            I pass the afternoon reading, before bouncing up the front steps for a glass of wine. In the meantime, that is, since I left the house to read by the river, I am startled that something darts out of the flower box as I open the screen door. I think it’s the mouse, or perhaps a lizard scampering away from my intruding presence. But, looking closer at the flower pots, I see a massing of moss and pine straw. Deep inside are four little…I mean tiny…the size of a dime if it were a sphere…white eggs. 

            It’s the wrens again. They never like my houses I hang in the trees, but they find the most intriguing spaces to nestle their little eggs. Sometimes they are in the rafters of the porch. To get there, the male has managed to squeeze his tiny body under the screen door, a crack of about 1.5 inches. And, with beakfuls of nesting material again and again, until he’s made another choice for his mate. I find nests in the coffee pot downstairs, or the basket I brought from the Orinoco River.

            I always hope to see the fledglings, and never mind where the wrens nest. I hope they make it this year.