THE NATIONAL BIRD

That's what Ben Franklin famously thought the turkey should be. It was, he wrote, "a much more respectable bird" than the eagle, which he considered to be "a rank coward". He thought the turkey to be "a true original native of America, and a bird of courage" that would willingly attack any grenadier of the British Guards who dared to invade his farm.

He was correct in thinking that the Tom turkey would aggressively protect itself, as many a stroller or golfer who has come too close to one can attest. But he was wrong in thinking that turkeys were native to the United States, although today they can be found in every state except Alaska. They were first encountered by 16th-century European explorers arriving in Mexico, where turkeys had been bred for centuries, making it one of only two birds native to the Americas (the other being the Muscovy duck). Imported to Europe and the Middle East, the birds reminded traders of the African guinea fowl that came to them along trade routes passing through Turkey, and thus came to be called "Turkey birds."

The bird that may be gracing your Thanksgiving table next week is a descendant of a millennia-long heritage, as fossil records from up to five-million years ago confirm. Although most consumer turkeys are farm-bred and raised, turkeys in the wild, as Franklin declared, are resourceful and agile. They can fly for short distances, with a flank speed of 50 miles an hour on the wing as they seek overnight roosts in trees. On the ground, they can run at 25 miles an hour when danger is sensed. They use their signature gobbles, that can be loud enough to be heard over a mile, to warn others of a threat; otherwise, the communicate with a series of clucks and purring noises. The poults that emerge from the hens' clutches of as many as eighteen eggs are up and foraging on their own within twenty-four hours and mature quickly, abandoned by the hen within a few days.

Lincoln proclaimed a national holiday of thanksgiving in 1863 as the Civil War neared its end, and presidents after him were presented with a turkey as a gift from the nation to mark the day. It wasn't until 1989 that President George H.W. Bush issued the first presidential pardon saving at least one turkey from the oven, a tradition observed by every president since.

Ancient Roots

Even though we live in the Palmetto State, we probably hardly notice that we're surrounded by one of the earth's oldest life forms - palms. Palm trees, along with related climbing or shrub-like cousins, are all descended from a common ancestor that first appears in the fossil record 80 million years ago, well before the arrival of flowering plants and grasses. (Also in the palm family are lianas and saw palmettos.) Humans have been cultivating palms for thousands of years, relying on them for wood, food, and shade.

A cabbage palm

Our most common forms here on the island include the cabbage palm (Arecaceae livistona), the palmetto (A. sabal) and the royal palm (A. roystonea). Like all palm trees, these varieties lack the ability to grow rings the way deciduous trees do, resulting in the palm tree's straight trunks of uniform diameter. Nor do they sprout branches, but produce spikes from their crowns from which the fronds develop. With deep, single tap roots, palms can withstand gale-force winds, find water even in desert climates and live more than a century.

Anthropologists theorize that the rise of human civilization in Mesopotamia was due in large part to the palm tree, especially the date palm, which not only provided a high-energy, easily transported food source but also served as an indicator of potential water sources. Palms were being cultivated five thousand years ago, and their importance can be measured by their association in human culture with peace and fertility. The Bible mentions palm trees more than thirty times; the Quran, more than twenty times.

Dates ready for harvesting

Today, palms remain a key cash crop, providing among much else palm oil, rattan for furniture, thatching for traditional housing, açai berries, coconut milk, dates, a number of dyes, and even wine produced from the fermented leaves of a type of Chilean palm tree. Here in the Lowcountry, the wood of the cabbage palm was used to fortify Fort Moultrie during the Revolutionary War, since the tree's soft, spongy wood was able to deflect or absorb British cannon fire.

Ubiquitous they may be, but palms represent one of nature's longest-running success stories, rooted deep in Lowcountry soil.

Coyote Smarts

courtesy Post&Courier

Taking note of the increasing presence of coyotes in our martime environment, SIPOA recently promulgated a Coyote Management Plan to underscore our co-existence with this iconic wildlife species. Our local population of coyotes (Canis latrans) mate in late winter and produce litters of up to five pups. SIPOA's wildlife map records increasingly common sightings throughout the island.

Coyotes are now present throughout South Carolina; and although populations are concentrated in the Midlands and the Upstate, where they were first noted in 1978, the animals have been common in the Lowcountry for more than thirty years, following the push into new territory by one of their prey species, armadillos. Further afield from Seabrook, Isle of Palms has reported a population of sixty coyotes, who have been observed swimming to Dewee's Island from IOP, Mount Pleasant and Sullivan's Island to breed and den. They've been spotted on beaches dining on ghost crabs, scouring the tideline for washed-up fish, or creeping through marine underbrush for rabbits, mice and snakes. Their diet is filled out by deer fawn, insects and berries.

Considered a pest species by some, particularly as a threat to deer populations, data collected over the past thirty years indicates that the the number of white-tailed deer (South Carolina's state animal) remains plentiful, with coyotes serving as a curb on overpopulation by replacing the now endangered red wolf as an apex predator. Nonetheless, the state doesn't require a license to hunt or trap coyote on private land within 100 yards of one's residence and designates December 1st through March 1st for trapping state-wide.

Coyotes and humans have been linked in mythology for centuries, particularly in the legends of western and Great Plains Native Americans. Coyote is usually portrayed as a wily trickster, but one myth tells the story of Coyote singing with Earth Maker to create the world and its humans. Another attributes the bringing of fire to Coyote, who steals it from the sun. And one Navajo legend tells how Coyote, who lived in the Sky, one day felt the Sky reaching down to touch the Earth, where the First People were struggling to survive. Coyote leaped down from the Sky to teach the First People how to hunt and fish, and has been with mankind ever since.