It’s easy to forget this while sipping merlot and
emailing friends, but it’s true. Ask anybody. We
belong to the kingdom of animalia, the order of
primates, the genus of homo, the species of
sapiens, the advanced species of wine lovers and
the super-duper family of sailors. (The last two
are just theories at this point. Mine, actually.)
I also believe that like warblers we humans are
hard-wired to do certain things like, for example,
migrate to Florida during the winter months.
However, because we have advanced brains and
central heating, many in the kingdom of animalia
ignore those signals. And that is such a shame,
because those who live in cold climates could be
having so much fun outside in the sunshine and
stay warm, too. Not listening to those health
signals, I suspect, is one of the primary causes
of the growing pandemic that the researchers call
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
Warblers are hard-wired to fly to Southwest
Florida in September and depart for Central
America in November. We’ll miss them, of course,
but it’s okay because they are listening to their
inner selves and doing what they are supposed to
do. Anyway, more snowbirds are on the way. Flocks
of white pelicans from Canada will soon be
floating in sheltered coves, diving on thick
schools of minnows and taking graceful winged
exercise together. Belted kingfishers will whistle
and zoom through mangrove passages. Here and there
a loon from the land of frozen lakes (Midwest and
Canada) will pop to the surface with a fish
wiggling in its beak. Our resident bald eagles and
hawks always invite their cousins to visit from up
north and they all come.
None of these snowbirds to the best of modern
scientific knowledge suffers from SAD. Nor is
there a documented case of SAD among our permanent
populations of herons, ibises, egrets, willets and
bitterns. All of these happy creatures are on
display in the winter months to watchful sailors.
Vic and I especially like to cruise the skinny
backbay waters of Pine Island Sound because we can
observe so many birds doing what their instincts
tell them to do.
As scientific observers of the barrier islands of
biodiversity at certain times of the year we
hypothesize that we are also obeying silent neural
instructions up to and including the part when we
put the cork back into the tall, brown bottle with
the dark red fluid. When summer returns to Florida
each year Vic and I, still obeying said neural
system signals, uncork the chardonnay and migrate
to cooler climes to visit relatives in New York
City, Vermont, Indiana and other points north.
As a young history student in Indiana I remember
learning about and feeling so sorry for the native
Americans of the upper Midwest who had to try to
stay warm through those brutal
winters wearing only
those meager garments. But I later learned they
didn’t stay there in the winter. They went
south, following the sun, eating fresh fish and
going where the weather suited their clothes. They
were the original Florida snowbirds of the homo
sapiens persuasion.
Vic and I and the visitor’s bureau warmly invite
you and yours to do what warblers, ruby throated
hummingbirds and all birds of a certain feather do
enthusiastically when the temperature drops --
vacation in Florida.
People, listen to your inner selves. The heating
bills that arrive at your home this fall and
winter will remind you of that.
