| Summer on Amelia Island is lizard season. You can hardly walk out of
your door before encountering your first green anole or Cuban anole doing push-ups in the
sun. And, if you care to venture into some of the last wild places on the island, you may
even see alligators, not really a lizard, but lizard-like in many ways. From big ones to
small ones, reptiles of all types are fun to find, and to watch once you find them.
Male anoles display their throat fans as a way One place to look for alligators is the Egan's Creek Greenway mid-island. If you enter the Greenway from the Atlantic Avenue Recreation Center parking lot and walk south on the path, in a mile or so you will come to a pond on your left. The signs posted here announce the sometime presence of a female alligator and a few of her small offspring that still keep her company. If you are lucky you may see them in the pond, but if not, continue walking south and you may find an alligator basking in the sun along the path. Even if you find no alligators on the day of your walk, no doubt you will be rewarded by sights of wading birds, and pond turtles, and maybe even an otter or bobcat. A walk on the Greenway always turns up something interesting. Another place to spot alligators is in Fort Clinch State Park, along the Willow Pond nature trail. As with the alligators on the Greenway, the gators in these marshy ponds are well-hidden in floating vegetation, and often it is only the lumps of their eyes that give their motionless presence away. But a gator sunning itself on the path is hard to miss!
Alligators can often be found sunning themselves If all else fails, you can most always find gators in the retention pond bordering the salt-marsh at the edge of the Gateway to Amelia complex near the Shave Bridge. Although alligators can travel in salt-marshes, they still need fresh water to drink, and this pond provides a convenient watering hole along the way. When walking in areas where alligators might be hiding, be careful with any pets or small children. Alligators most often eat fish, and turtles and birds and other live prey that they find in and around the waters they inhabit. But, a tasty morsel that walks into their vicinity is fair game. When alligators are not used to being fed by people, they generally fear humans and stay at a distance. Don't take any chances and keep your dog closely on a lead. Even large dogs like boxers and Labrador retrievers sometimes become food for quick-snatching alligators. Luckily, though, watching alligators is generally a passive sport, with little activity to note. If you want to watch reptiles, there is usually a lot more action to see when you set your sights on the small lizards, called anoles, that live all around us here on Amelia Island. Once you start noticing them and watching their behavior, you'll be hooked.
An alligator is seen here floating in a freshwater pond We have two species of anoles here, the native green anole and the invading brown Cuban anole, an introduced species from the Caribbean. Green anoles are daintier-looking and masters at changing colors. Depending on temperature, emotional state or light conditions, green anoles can change from green to brown in seconds, earning them the local common name of "chameleons." Real chameleons are capable of much more extreme color changes, and are only found in Africa. Cuban anoles also change color, but only in a more restricted palate, from dark brown to light grey. Cuban anoles may not be good color change artists, but they each have different stripes and blotches and other individual markings that can be used to tell them apart. With a bit of observation and a little practice, before too long you should be able to identify some of the individual anoles in your backyard. Anoles are territorial lizards that claim their areas by displaying to one another, such as doing push-ups, bobbing their heads and projecting their orange-colored dewlaps (throat fans). A male anole will perform similarly to attract the attention of a female. Often in the summer you can watch a pair of anoles display to one another and then begin what looks to be a life-and-death struggle. Sometimes, after a few moments, the anoles reposition themselves and it becomes obvious that love and not war is on their mind.
Cuban anoles have only been in Florida for about sixty years or so, arriving by hitch-hiking on vessels from the Caribbean. These anoles are more robust than the green anole and more amenable to backyard habitats of landscape plants and concrete. Cuban anoles live closer to the ground in shrubs, while green anoles prefer higher leafy trees. With more and more of Florida being converted to suburbs with good Cuban anole habitat, there are less forests and leafy trees that green anoles favor. Although Cuban anoles are bigger than green anoles and could overpower them in an interspecies fight, they do not need to physically struggle to win their turf. Both anole species sometimes eat baby anoles, and the more aggressive Cuban anoles most likely devour more green anole babies, than vice versa. But, even without such predation, development in Florida alone is helping Cuban anoles take over. If you wish to learn more about anoles, in a lively narrative way, you may wish to look online and order the book: Anoles: Those Florida Yard Lizards by Steve Isham. If you want to know more about most Florida reptiles, a good source is Florida's Fabulous Reptiles and Amphibians, available in local bookstores. But the best way to learn more about anoles and alligators is to take the time to find them. All around you on Amelia Island are nature-viewing opportunities, as close as the shrubs in your backyard garden or as exciting as a walk down a wooded swampy path in Fort Clinch State Park. If you just get out and look, you won't be sorry. Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D. is a zoologist and story teller on Amelia Island. Look for her weekly column, Wild Ways in the Wednesday News-Leader and contact Amelia River Cruises at 261-9972 to learn about upcoming Wild Ways boat tours.
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