Stories of the Upper Keys, part IV
It was 1832 when American ornithologist, naturalist and painter John James Audubon explored the Florida Keys. Arriving at Indian Key on April 25, he hired James Egan as his guide.
He wrote of Egan, "The pilot, besides being a first-rate shot, possessed a most intimate acquaintance with the country. He had been a 'conch-diver,' and no matter what number of fathoms measured the distance between the surface of the water and its craggy bottom, to seek for curious shells in their retreat seemed to him more pastime than toil. Not a Cormorant or Pelican, a Flamingo, an Ibis, or Heron, had ever in his days formed its nest without his having marked the spot; and as to the Keys to which the Doves are wont to resort, he was better acquainted with them than many fops axe with the contents of their pockets. In a word, he positively knew every channel that led to these islands, and every cranny along their shores. For years his employment had been to hunt those singular animals called Sea Cows or Manatees, and he had conquered hundreds of them, 'merely,' as he said, because the flesh and hide bring 'a fair price' at Havannah.”
After a day of birding, Egan brought Audubon back to Indian Key where, according to Audubon, “The sailors and other individuals, to whom my name and pursuits had become known, carried our birds to the pilot's house. His good wife had a room ready for me to draw in, and my assistant might have been seen busily engaged in skinning, while George Lehman was making a sketch of the lovely isle.”
The house where Audubon stayed is best remembered as the Perrine House today. The sketch of Indian Key drawn by Lehman on that visit is thought to be the island seen in the background of Audubon’s drawing of a brown booby. The booby (Sula leucogaster) was encountered in the Dry Tortugas. While Audubon departed the Keys a long, long time ago, his legacy in the Upper Keys lingers to this day.
Though initially conceived in 1886, the idea of an Audubon Society was reinvigorated with the casual gathering of ladies in Massachusetts who, in 1896, drank tea and discussed the merits of not wearing hats decorated with bird plumes. A handful of years later, in 1901, the Audubon Model Law passed to help protect water birds like egrets and herons from feather hunters. The following year Guy Bradley was hired as Audubon’s first game warden. Bradley’s area of concern was the Everglades where, on July 8, 1905, he was murdered by plume hunters. To commemorate his life, Florida Bay’s Bradley Key was named in his honor.
Audubon returned to the Upper Keys in 1938, if only in spirit, when Robert Porter Allen, the National Audubon Society’s first director of research, established an Audubon research station in Tavernier. To this day, Allen remains one of the Florida Keys lesser known heroes.
In 1941 only a single flock of 15 whooping cranes, North America’s tallest bird, were documented in the United States. Standing approximately five feet tall and with a seven-foot wingspan, whooping cranes have made a slow, but relatively steady comeback thanks to the herculean efforts of Robert Porter Allen. Credited with bringing back the whooping crane from the edge of extinction, an account of his amazing effort can be read in the aptly titled book, “The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane.”
Today, four flocks of whooping cranes are found in North America containing an aggregate of more than 440 birds. The whooping crane, however, was not the only endangered species to come under the careful scrutiny of Allen.
When he moved to Tavernier, Allen studied another bird on the edge of extinction, the roseate spoonbill. Studying a species in those days generally involved the dissection and examination of dead specimens. In order to gather information about the spoonbill, Allen instead pitched a tent in the bird’s natural habitat and observed them first hand. His work was published in his own 1942 book, “The Roseate Spoonbill.” Today, study of the roseate spoonbill is still being conducted at the Audubon Research Center, called today the Everglades Science Center, by Dr. Jerry Lorenz at the facility now located on Tavernier’s Indian Mound Trail.
After Allen’s death in 1963, the U.S. Parks Service memorialized him by naming a small collection of islands located approximately six miles north of Whale Harbor Channel, the span of water separating Windley and Upper Matecumbe keys, the Bob Allen Keys. Coincidentally, a group of islands found approximately four miles northwest of Whale Harbor Channel had been named the Crane Keys on a U.S. Coast Survey Chart dated 1863. As no cranes are indigenous to the Florida Keys, herons or egrets were likely associated with the small group of islands.
That the Bob Allen Keys happen to be in proximity to the Crane Keys is either happenstance or serendipity. In either case, having an island named after the man whose hard work and dedication became one of the guiding forces behind the 1973 implementation of the Endangered Species Act seems like the least that could be done. His daughter, Alice, still lives in Tavernier.
Brad Bertelli is a published author of four books on Florida and Florida Keys history. As well as operating Historic Upper Keys Walking Tours, he is s the curator of the Keys History & Discovery Center, located at the Islander Resort. His column will appear every other week in The Reporter. Reach Brad with comments and questions at WhyPanic@aol.com.
This story was originally published September 9, 2016 at 1:23 PM with the headline "Stories of the Upper Keys, part IV."