St. Marks NWR

It has been a few days since I posted a blog entry. On Wednesday the 9th, I bicycled 68 miles from Lake City FL to Perry FL. There was no birding that day, and the scenery was fairly consistently thin pine forests and swamp for the ride. With the temperature hitting the low 90s, it felt like more miles than it actually was. On the 10th, I hit the road early since I was biking to St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. In this post, I will share some landscape photos from the refuge and describe the last couple of days. I will try to get another post out tomorrow with some bird photos from the refuge.

I arrived at St. Marks refuge at about 10:30, then proceeded to bicycle over 30 miles within the refuge, eventually leaving just before 6:00. At the tip of the refuge is the St. Marks Lighthouse. It is about 11 miles from the turnoff from main road into the refuge all the way out to the lighthouse. It felt like a milestone to arrive at the Gulf shore.

Besides the main road to the lighthouse, the refuge is filled with roads like this for bicyclists and hikers. It was on these roads and paths that I spent most of the day.

These roads allowed me to explore many of the ponds scattered across the landscape.

Connecting the ponds were a network of marshes and channels. From the heart of the refuge to my B&B in the town of St. Marks was about 14 miles, so I did not get to my room until about 6:30pm. All I had time for that evening was taking a shower, getting some food, checking in with Kate, and going to sleep.

I woke up early on Friday the 11th, and wandered from the B&B to the St. Marks River about a third of a mile away. I had a call I needed to take at midday, so I spent the morning working my way through the more than 8000 bird photos I had taken the day before. It turns out I had photographed 51 different bird species during my first outing.

After my call, I biked into the refuge. I explored some of the other trails including some single track like this. While there is a wide variety of birds in the refuge, the birds are quite spread out and often challenging to find.

After making my way out of the trail above, I looked southwest to this sight. Given that I was almost all the way out at the lighthouse, I decided that I really should head on back to my B&B as quickly as I could. The good news was that the wind was blowing strongly in from the Gulf providing a nice tailwind. This allowed me to make very good time cruising along at over 20 mph. The bad news was that was not nearly fast enough to outrun the incoming squall. By the time I was halfway back, skies opened up and I was immediately soaked in a tremendous downpour. Fifteen minutes later, the rain stopped as quickly as it had arrived, so that by the time I got to my B&B, the sun was back out.

This morning I headed out to the refuge early. The sun was just rising as I made my way out of town.

To get to the refuge, I cycle across the St. Marks river. The tiny town of St. Marks is about 3 miles down the right bank of the river while the refuge is on the left bank.

The first couple of miles entering the refuge are forest land with some portions of swamp.

I came across this deer and was quite surprised that it did not immediately sprint off into the woods. I had just enough time to grab my cell phone out of my back pocket and snap this photo just as the deer started to turn and disappear into the thicket.

I find the landscape both really beautiful and very peaceful. Being out here nurtures my soul.

Today was very quiet from a birding perspective. I biked around ponds and through clusters of trees and bushes, but found remarkably few birds today.

Eventually, I decided to head back to the B&B and catch up on my photo culling, tagging, and to write this blog post.

I did get one final surprise. As I biked along the path above, I noticed a raccoon scampering along. It slipped down to the water. there I found it searching for food.