THE ONES THAT DIDN’T GET AWAY

Marathon anglers stack up impressive catches

Not that anyone truly forgets, but sometimes it’s good to get a reminder: there’s a reason the Florida Keys are widely regarded as the sportfishing capital of the world. Over the last week, the Marathon Weekly received several submissions from individuals and crews who landed the catch of a lifetime after battles with powerful species. Break out the tape measure and call the taxidermist – these are true trophies.

Mark Hedden

... is a photographer, writer, and semi-professional birdwatcher. He has lived in Key West for more than 25 years and may no longer be employable in the real world. He is also executive director of the Florida Keys Audubon Society.

Iwas meeting Kevin Christman to do some birding at the Key West Tropical Forest and Botanical Garden, which I always think of as just the Botanical Garden, but I had to run some errands first and he arrived before me. His first report from the field was a text that said there was an Easter egg hunt on and kids everywhere, but he thought if he got in there, he could probably beat most of them to the eggs.

I thought about it for a second, Kevin being 2 to 3 times taller than most of the more youthful participants, which would give him an advantage in stride length and finding eggs set on top of things. But the kids were much closer to the ground, giving them not only much tighter turning radii, but also limiting how much effort they had to put into stooping down and scooping up the eggs. And they would have an advantage finding the eggs that were hidden under things. Not to mention all the over-protective parents Kevin would have to fight off. And really, aren’t eggs just birds that don’t move? Where’s the challenge in that?

I was driving, but hoping to text him some of these thoughts at the next stop light, when another text from him came through. This one said, “BANANAQUIT!!!”

All thoughts of Easter eggs were vanquished.

Bananaquits are these chattery sugar junkies from Central America, South America and the Caribbean. They are a little bigger than a North America warbler, and huskier in shape, and with a sturdy, long-for-a-songbird, downcurved bill. They have bright yellow breasts and bellies and black heads with thick white eyebrows that are often described in the literature as conspicuous. They feed mostly on fruit and nectar. I’ve seen a few thousand of them in my travels, usually swarming hummingbird feeders for the easy fix. But I hadn’t seen one for a long time, and I’d only ever seen one in the U.S., years ago at Bahia Honda State Park.

I did what I could to get there faster which, in the land of lollygagging golf carts and swerving scooters, was not much. The sides of College Road, when I got there, spilled over with parked cars, making me mutter profanities about parking like a person from up the Keys. Then I ended up getting tips from someone about ducks and where to find them.

Inside, the park was as packed as I’d ever seen it. People were everywhere. Kids were everywhere, wandering and weaving in an anticipatory Easter egg hunt haze. I tried to hurry, but mostly concentrated on not tripping over any of them. As Whitney Houston once said, “I believe that children are the future.”