Sunday, February 26, 2017
We awoke early on Saturday morning, as we usually do, at the Newport County Park. We hoped to get an early start on birding at the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. The entrance road is just across from the campground. There were some special birds listed at the visitor center when we stopped by on Friday that we hoped to find.
Although it was already light when we drove the refuge road, it was also gray and a bit drizzly. Our first stop to find a Henslow's Sparrow came up empty of any birds, except for an Eastern Bluebird, in the cool damp morning. The same happened at our second stop, an attempt to find a Vermillion Flycatcher. We decided to go all the way to the end of the road to the St. Marks Lighthouse where the impound would certainly have ducks.
We arrived at the boat ramp area during a frenzy of fishermen launching their boats. There is a canal leading out to the gulf which is evidently a popular place to fish. The parking lot for the trail around the Lighthouse Pool is also a parking lot for the launching ramp into the canal. We found a spot far from the ramp and decided to bird a trail that goes along the far side of the canal.
This didn't last long as it started to rain heavily as we were a couple of minutes down the trail. It wasn't forecast to rain and we had no jackets or hats and Ellen had no cover for her camera. It was a quick dash back to Speedy to get out of the rain.
It was just a brief shower and after it stopped the clouds started to move out quickly as we walked around the pool counting the ducks, coots, herons and egrets. We managed to see a big group of Redheads as well as the everpresent Blue-winged Teal. We don't see many Redhead ducks at home. They were in a mixed group of Scaup, Coots and Teal. Among them was a single Canvasback, another duck we do not see often, and a pair of Widgeon (spotted by Ellen, missed by me). We noticed quite a few Common Gallinule mixed in with the coots. It was probably a 50/50 mix, many more than we've seen elsewhere. We also saw a pair of Bald Eagles passing by heading for their nest further inland (we got a look at that a bit later).
By the time we walked the perimeter of the pool and also along the Gulf Shore (cormorants, pelicans, terns and sea ducks), it was lunch time. We decide to just have it where we were parked which had a nice view. As we were eating, another visitor, a Canadian couple, came by to ask about Speedy. Everyone seems interested in Speedy. We gave him and his wife the quick tour.
After lunch, we drove slowly back down the road toward the entrance. The refuge has a series of pools that the road runs past and we stopped at each one and added to our list. One notable sighting was a group of Widgeon feeding right next to the road.
When we got back to the now sunny location where the Vermillion Flycatcher was supposed to be, he was waiting for us, just sitting on a post next to the parking area. We got a very good look at him before he was disturbed and flew across the road. This was next to a fairly empty impound with a canal between two dikes. We saw a Virginia Rail here on our last visit but not today. In fact we saw no rails even though we heard them in the marshes, possibly due to high water levels.
There is a large flat to the south of the dikes and it was teeming with shorebirds. We were also looking into the sun which makes identifying birds difficult. We could make out the nearby Least Sandpipers and a few Dowitchers, Willets and Yellowlegs but the large mass of birds was rather far out and completely in silhouette.
After one more stop where we saw Anhinga, turtles and alligators, we got back to the grassland where the Henslow's Sparrow was supposed to be. We searched and managed to flush two little birds, one of which was probably the sparrow, but didn't find it to identify. It would have been a life bird. We also saw more bluebirds and chatter with a local fisherman. He said he had caught "mud" fish near this spot in the past but that they weren't good eating. No doubt.
In all, we saw 53 species during more than eight hours of birding at St. Mark's.
Sunday was a travel day. We got an early start as we headed back toward the East Coast. We had a reservation for a beachside site at Ft. Clinch on Amelia Island, one of our favorite campgrounds (also the northernmost state park in Florida, where we had ice on our first trip here). Our route was about half interstate and half secondary roads and we made Amelia Island by mid-day, in time to do the usual chores—grocery shopping, laundry and, for Ellen, a haircut.
We got to the park around 3 PM, found our site and settled in. I had a shower in the best showers so far this trip. The beach campground got a new bath house a couple of years ago. On our first trip, the showers here were in a wooden cabana, open at the top and bottom (did I mention it was near freezing on that trip?). Ellen went birding to get her list for the day and a bit of exercise after driving all day.
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