Lake City, FL
Today I took a rest day in Lake City FL. I slept in, then had a nice morning coffee and quiche at wonderful cafe called Xapa. After breakfast, I headed over to Alligator Park where I spent most of the day.
Between yesterday afternoon and today, I have seen a nice variety of birds, insects, and wildlife. When I arrived yesterday, stopped at the small lake right in the center of Lake City. While I sat on the grass, some Muscovy Duck chicks wandered past.
In the lake itself, I saw this Double-Crested Cormorant having a snack.
By my count, Lake City has at least 5 ponds and lakes within the city. At one of the other ponds yesterday, I noticed this Limpkin in the vegitation.
This morning when I arrived at Alligator Park, which includes the largest of the lakes in Lake City, the first bird I saw was a Purple Martin, another new bird for my life list. As it would turn out, it was also the only new bird for my 2025 list today.
In addition to birds, I took the time to photographed some other creatures such as this Dragonfly. Capturing a dragonfly in flight can be quite a challenge since they dart around so quickly. This one hovered for a couple of seconds which is the only reason I was able to get the photo.
As I walked along in the afternoon, I came across this snake in the path. I’m not sure what type of snake it is, but one of the local walking by told me that Water Moccasins were the only snake around here that are poisonous.
I also noticed this lizard scampering up a tree.
The park had perhaps 4 miles of trails with some boardwalks as well.
As I walked slowly along the paths, I sometimes came across larger birds in the trees such as this White Ibis.
This Anhinga is another such example.
The larger birds are often much easier to photograph than the smaller ones. I saw a number of warblers. All of them were Palm Warblers except for this Prairie Warbler, yet this is a nicer photo than any of the 30 Palm Warblers I photographed today.
Yesterday, I was somewhat more successful with the Palm Warblers as I was able to capture this photo.
Tomorrow, I will be biking about 66 miles as I ride most of the way towards St. Marks NWR on the Gulf Coast. I do not have any birding hotspots identified for this ride, so I suspect that I many not post a blog tomorrow.