Alligator Sunning at Galliard Lake, Dauphin Island Poster

"Alligator Sunning at Galliard Lake, Dauphin Island, AlabamaA" by Catherine Sherman An alligator suns himself along the edge of Gaillard Lake in the Audubon Bird Sanctuary on Dauphin Island, Alabama. Water lilies grow in the water near the shore. I visited the refuge almost every day in February 2021, but I rarely saw the alligator. Alligators are cold-blooded, so they are very slow in low temperatures. Some times the lows on the island were in the 30s and forties. A few nights the temperatures dropped below freezing, so the alligator was probably hiding out in a den most of the time. American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) don't hibernate as mammals do; they “brumate.” Being cold-blooded, they respond to the temperature of their environment. When it gets cold, they make a den or underground burrow and shut down. They don’t go to sleep; if brumating in a burrow underwater they have to surface to breathe. As they brumate their metabolism slows, and they stop eating. This photo was the best view I had of him. The few other times I saw him, he was facing the lake. One time as I was walking the trail in the refuge, I saw a group of people staring down into the water from the overlook platform. I thought they were looking at the turtles, but when I finally made my way around the lake arrived to the overlook I saw the alligator swimming toward his sunning spot. The visitors said he had been just under the overlook platform. I've seen plenty of alligators before, but when they are elusive, it's more exciting when you finally spot them, especially when they are a safe distance away. Dauphin Island is considered one of the top four locations in North America for viewing spring bird migrations. The Sanctuary consists of 137 acres of maritime forest, marshes, and dunes, including a lake, a swamp, and a beach. The three-mile trail system within the Sanctuary is a National Recreational Trail. The refuge is at the Eastern end of Dauphin Island, a 14 mile-long barrier island south of the Alabama mainland Gulf Coast. The Sanctuary is an important habitat because it is the largest segment of protected forest on the Island and the first landfall for neo-tropical migrant birds after their long flight across the Gulf from Central and South America each spring.