When I got down to St. Marks NWR, a bright half-moon hung high in the clear night sky. There was time for almost two hours of night birding before sunrise and I slowly worked my way out to the back edge of Stony Bayou. I stopped often to listen for owls, but heard only the staccato trilling of Leopard Frogs.
Out on the Stony Bayou levee things began to pick up. A pair of Chuck-wills-widows were duetting. King Rail and Sora called from deep in the marsh and a Least Bittern sounded off close by. At first light Marsh Wrens began to sing and a flock of seven Common Loons flew over heading for their summer home in the Great North Woods.
At sunrise I swung around the end of Stony Bayou and headed West on the Outer Levee. Tree and Barn Swallows were hunting over the marshes and three-foot tall Purple Thistles were growing along the levee’s edge. Because thistles are a favored nectar source for newly-arrived Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, I kept scanning them.
I saw a quick flitting movement. It was a hummer flying in to feed on a thistle. As I approached, it flew off to the North. I kept checking the thistles as I drove along the levee and kept seeing hummers. In total, I found eleven Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, almost all were male, which is typical of the first migratory wave of hummers.
My actual purpose for driving the levees was not to monitor hummingbird migration. Technically, I was doing a shorebird survey with a little freelance recreational birding on the side. I ran my usual route and ended up with 2,712 shorebirds of 13 species. Eighty percent of the shorebirds were on Tower Pond at high tide and most of them were Dunlin. The remainder were mostly Short-billed Dowitchers and Willets.
We’re just past the Vernal Equinox and it is now officially Spring, but at St. Marks the seasons flow together with no sharp boundaries. A few Winter species linger at the refuge, even as returning summer resident birds are setting up territories and trans-migrants are passing through.
On my way out of the refuge, I stopped on Lighthouse Road to walk at the Double Bridges. March is leaf out month and the cypresses, oaks, maples, ashes, willows and other trees were in various stages of leaf growth. Their leaves were in multiple shades of green, pale yellow and red. The hammock along the road had winter birds; Hermit Thrush, Orange-crowned Warbler and Ruby-crowned Kinglet, but also summer birds; Northern Parula and Red-eyed Vireo. That’s how it is in later March.
The pace of seasonal change is not constant. Like the flow of water in a river, it varies and is sometimes faster and at other times slower. We are about to enter a very fast and turbulent period. During the next few weeks as many as ten million birds may pass through St. Marks. Most will simply fly over, but some will stop at St. Marks to feed and rest before continuing a journey that may end in the boreal forests of Canada or along the arctic coast.
Come down to St. Marks for Spring migration 2022. There’s no memorial t-shirt, but there will be some exciting birding.
Don Morrow - Tallahassee, FL