The Blue Darter Story

I think it was the spring term of our junior year at Apopka High School (1932) that there was a contest to find a mascot for our AHS athletic teams. I proposed the "Blue Darter" and surprisingly it won. "Blue darter" was the common, rather unscientific name we had for a blue-winged, pigeon-sized bird that darted through the piney woods, catching and eating small birds and animals. This seemed to me to have the right color for our blue-and-white school colors, and its small size and aggressive nature seemed appropriate for our rather small, lightweight teams, which had to depend more on speed and quickness for success.

Today as a college graduate with a degree in Biology and much more interest in our birds, I know that the "blue darter" is a small raptor, either the Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiler strialus) or the slightly larger but less common Cooper's Hawk (Accipiler cooperii). I am told that some people have confused it with the Anahinga (which is also called a 94 water turkey"). This I cannot understand because the Anhinga is more than twice as large as the Blue Darter, is black with a few white streaks, and is a water bird, found chiefly in the Everglades and swampy areas and feeding on fish.

It was a great privilege for me to have witnessed the Apopka team win the Big League World Championship here in Tucson on August 14, 1999 - and to have been introduced by Mayor John Land to those about-to-become champions as the originator of the Blue Darter label. Maybe that brought them some luck.