Oh, what fun it is to take an evening cruise of the southern bay in Biscayne National Park. What, no boat? You don’t need one. For $15 per person, you can do it on a park tour boat with a ranger telling you all about what you see and what you don’t notice.

That comes with a campfire and s’mores.

The park will run two 75-minute cruises on each of two Saturdays — March 18 and April 15 — one starting at 6 p.m. and the other at 7:30.

Sooner still, you can enjoy a free campfire concert by singer-songwriter Grant Livingston, otherwise known as “South Florida’s Historian in Song.” Right, Livingston sings of characters in regional history, and he does it rather cleverly in a musical style that comes from ragtime, country, blues and swing.

That’s scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 18 at 6:30 p.m. S’mores are included in this too. Bring your own camp chairs and ground blankets.

Of course these things can’t be done without giving them a catchy name, so they’re named Park After Dark. The location is the park’s visitor center at 9700 SW 328 St., on the bayfront, 9 miles east of Homestead.

You’ll need a reservation for the cruise. Call 786-335-3644. The events are weather-dependent so save the number to double-check on the day of your cruise.

Bird populations reclassified

There’s mixed news from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Commission concerning the birds we see at marshes and shorelines.

Brown pelicans and snowy egrets have been removed from the state’s list of “Imperiled Species,” along with that less famous but hardly unimportant creature, the Lake Eustis pupfish.

FWC credits that to successful conservation, although its announcement says those birds will continue being monitored and conserved. A dozen other imperiled critter species also have been delisted.

The state is more worried than before about our little blue heron, tricolored heron, reddish egret, roseate spoonbill and seaside sparrows (both the Scott and Wakulla versions) of the bird persuasion. Formerly on the list called Species of Special Concern, they have been reclassified as threatened.

That doesn’t necessarily reflect a clear, present danger, but it means they have small populations or are declining in number or have a very limited range.

Five fish also have been reclassified from special concern to threatened: The bluenose shiner, salt marsh top minnow, southern tessellated darter, Santa Fe crayfish and Black Creek crayfish.

Observing Florida’s birds

You can observe some of those birds referenced above — herons, egrets and spoonbills — in nesting colonies at Paurotis Pond, an Everglades National Park highlight 24 miles down the road from the main entrance near Homestead.

Human hubbub gives them the jitters, so access beyond the parking lot was closed in January as usual for the nesting season, which probably will last well into May or even June.

During the rest of the year you can paddle a canoe or kayak around the pond and do fishing, but not now. That’s not so bad, for during the next four months the pond area should be dense with wood stork — perhaps as many as 100 couples — plus spoonbills, egrets, herons, ibis and anhingas.

Most of those birds can be seen close at hand in other places, but the breathtaking roseate spoonbill often makes you work for just a mid-range sighting. If you’re patient, quiet and keep still, there’s a good chance now that some will swoop gratifyingly near as you stand in the parking lot.

Bring binoculars and telephoto cameras just in case.

Non native fish gets a new home

An exotic one-spot rabbitfish, which looks nothing like a rabbit but does have one spot, was removed from an artificial reef off Mizell-Johnson State Park in October and given a new home at the Frost Museum of Science in Miami.

The bright yellow fish with black trim is native to the Pacific Ocean. As an illegal immigrant, it was taken into custody by Lad Akins and Emily Stokes of REEF, the Reef Environmental Education Foundation. Two interns helped them corral it.

Practically all the attention for exotic marine species hereabouts is given to ubiquitous Public Enemy No. 1, the Indo-Pacific lionfish.

Nobody was seriously after rabbitfish, one spot or not, until Jenny Wuenschel, a REEF volunteer in Broward County, sent in photos of one. That was a surprise to the REEF crew.

The Miami Herald quoted Stokes, a specialist in invasive species: “Every once in a while, we get something off the wall.”

The posse caught it swimming among concrete erojacks, or dolos, that form the reef near the beach of Mizell- Johnson. That’s the park formerly named John U. Lloyd, between the Dania Beach pier and Port Everglades.

SFWMD posts podcasts

South Florida Water Management District has begun posting podcasts called Soundscience (one word) online. Check out the one that shows diver Kyle Sheppard challenging alligators for underwater rights to repair a flood control structure. You can watch the dive team at work with iTunes, Google PlayanPodBeam, as well as at the SFWMD website, here: www.sfwmd.gov/news-events/sound science.

Now, if that agency would only reopen the boating and fishing access sites it has been closing off for decades, and do at least minimal maintenance at the rest, it may retrieve some of its lost public favor.

Miami marine scientist wins award

Mandy Karnauskas, a NOAA fishery scientist stationed at Miami, has won a Presidential Early Career award for Scientists and Engineers. The award is “for her scientific productivity and innovative research in ecosystem assessments and fisheries oceanography, supporting the sustainable management of marine resources,” says NOAA’s announcement.

Karnauskas is on the staff of NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center, on Virginia Key. She and her team are credited with discovering evidence of a climate-caused reorganization of the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem. She developed ways to link the physical environment to biological responses in fish and helped to predict fish population changes.

Karnauskas holds a doctorate in marine biology and fisheries from the University of Miami.