Two Life Birds and Two Owlets

Ochlockonee River State Park, Sopchoppy, FL - Site #11

Today—Speedy blinks, we see two life birds and two Great Horned Owlets, then there is some Tupelo Honey.

While it didn't compare with temperatures in the teens in Cohasset, it was definitely chilly in Sopchoppy this morning, right at freezing when we made the morning coffee. It was so chilly, Ellen had two cups just to warm up. The little electric heater in Speedy is working overtime on this trip.

After an early breakfast, it was off to St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, thirty miles down the road.

We didn't get far. Speedy's "Check Engine" light came on before we even got out of the state park. We pulled over and stopped. One of the things I bought before we left is a little Bluetooth dongle that plugs into Speedy's diagnostic port. It sends data to an app on my phone. I got it so that I could have a tachometer for Speedy, since engine speed is available, but it also reports diagnostic fault codes. That feature came into use this morning.

It reported a Transmission Output Speed Sensor failure. This is the new transmission! I looked up what this meant and it measures the rotational speed of the transmission at the drive shaft connection. It is used by electronic transmissions to compare output speed to input speed to compute shift points. The van seemed to run fine even with the fault, but I wasn't sure. We continued on to St. Marks where I called Ted's Transmissions in Weymouth, where I had had the transmission rebuilt. It took a while to get a hold of Ted, but he has suggested that I check the wiring first.

We will keep an eye on things and try to find a dealer or repair shop when we get to Pensacola.

It was quite windy and chilly when we got out to the St. Marks lighthouse. We dressed in all the layers we had and looked along the path between the beach and pond. There were quite a few warblers, mostly Yellow-Rumped and lots of coots and duck in the pond. The shorebirds were on a sandbar quite far out, so it was impossible to identify them, even with the scope (I think shorebirds are impossible to identify in general). We cut that walk short as we had not brought any cameras along nor any guides and it was cold and windy.

After that we drove back to Stony Bayou Pool #1 and the Twin Dikes. This is the location where Vermilion Flycatchers had been seen. This is a bird we missed on the last trip to the Everglades. Virtually everyone who looked saw it, except us. The last sightings at St. Marks were about a quarter mile beyond the place the dikes joined together, which seemed about a mile away, so we prepared for a bit of a walk along the dike.

As we got out of Speedy, I walked across the road to look at the birds in a shallow section at the end of the East River Pool. There were some coots, two Common Moorhens, a Great Blue Heron....and a Vermilion Flycatcher sitting on a post. That was unexpected. It seemed to be a juvenile bird. We watched it fly from post to reed and back. Then it left and we headed up the dike.

There was some water in the canal between the dikes, but it was mostly muddy. There were quite a few sparrows digging in the mud. We had trouble identifying them, but I always have trouble with sparrows. They seemed to be mostly Swamp Sparrows and Song Sparrows.

Song Sparrow??

Song Sparrow?

Swamp Sparrow

As we were looking at some sparrows a larger bird walked through our view. It was a Virginia Rail, another bird we hadn't seen before and which had been reported to be here. This was the bird we were looking for in the reeds and we only saw it because we were looking at the sparrows. The photos are sort of fuzzy and it didn't stay in view very long.

We didn't see much else in the canal except alligators and turtles. This turtle seemed to have survived a bite.

There were lots of Yellow-rumped Warblers, but more interesting were the pair of Bald Eagles overhead, the Harrier hunting in the marsh and the Red-shouldered Hawk sitting on palm stump as we walked back to Speedy. It wasn't just warblers, sparrows and raptors, Ellen listed 23 species on this walk.

When we got back to the van, we took a quick look across the road and the flycatcher was back. We took few more looks as he flew practically up to us and landed on the guard rail where we were standing.

As a final stop for the day, we rode back towards the lighthouse to search for a reported owl's nest with owlets. We found it with the help of another birder. It was a Great Horned Owl with two young owlets in the nest. They were pretty far back in the woods in an abandoned eagle's nest. Using Ellen's spotting scope, we could see the owlets in the nest and the adult owl on a branch nearby, but it was a little out of range for our cameras.

On the way back to the campground we passed a truck selling Tupelo Honey by the side of the road (cue the Van Morrison). We stopped and bought a small bottle. He had quite the selection of items, honey, molasses, cane syrup and various jellies. We settled for just honey.

Tomorrow it is off to Gulf Islands National Seashore, Speedy willing.