A New Calendar

It’s January. A new calendar starts and St. Marks NWR pauses for a moment at the height of winter.  

In the predawn, wintering Soras will be easily spooked and will give their plaintive whinnying cry. Screech, Barred and Great Horned Owls will be calling on moonlit nights. Out in the salt marshes, Clapper Rails will be grunting. They’re one of five rail species that may be found at St. Marks in winter. 

Duck diversity and numbers are at their peak. The period following a frontal passage is the best time for observing them on those cold clear days when blue skies seem to stretch outward to infinity. This is the high season for duck viewing at the refuge. In normal years with no pandemic, we would expect birder groups from as far away as Atlanta and Miami, as well as, stray winter refugee birders from the Northern states. Despite Covid, people laden with binoculars, scopes and cameras will be walking the levees or parking along Lighthouse Pool looking for Redheads, scaup, wigeon, Bufflehead and over a dozen other species of waterfowl. 

Shorebirds will crowd Tower Pond at high tide, separating into species groups. The plovers and Least Sandpipers stay up on the mud. Willets, yellowlegs and dowitchers are in deeper water. In between many hundreds of Dunlin rest, waiting for the tide to turn before they leave to forage along newly-exposed coastal mudflats. Look carefully and you’ll see cryptically-colored Wilson’s Snipe probing the muddy edges of the refuge’s interior ponds. American Oystercatchers will work the exposed bars in the mouth of the St. Marks River at low tide.

On the Tower Pond Trail and at the Double Bridges, winter feeding flocks will be constantly on the move.  Warblers, kinglets, vireos and woodpeckers travel together, feeding and watching for marauding Sharp-shinned Hawks. Running in to a feeding flock produces a burst of exciting birding, otherwise it’s just a pleasant time of year for a walk in the woods.  

Everywhere on the refuge the struggle for life will continue. Hermit Thrushes will pop up to grab the bright red fruit of Dahoon Holly. Forster’s Terns will plunge dive for small fish. Chickadees and goldfinch will hang upside down on Sweetgum balls feeding on the seeds inside. Yellow-rumped Warblers will swarm through Wax Myrtle thickets searching for their dwindling supply of berries. Northern Harriers will glide over the marshes, hunting for unwary prey.

Along the edges of the levees, Swamp Sparrows will feed on Shepherd’s Needle seeds. Another dozen species of sparrows are on the refuge in winter and hardcore birders will be searching the wet weedy edges of the Helispot for skulking Henslow’s and LeConte’s Sparrows and hunting salt marshes for Nelson’s and Seaside Sparrows. Our resident Carolina and Marsh Wrens are joined by wintering House and Sedge Wrens in winter and, if you’re really lucky, a Winter Wren.

Each year there are changes in weather, vegetation and species abundance that combine to produce the refuge that we experience. Every January is a unique variation on a continuously recurring natural cycle: always much the same, but always different. This year an American Flamingo continues for the third winter, but it’s the first time in over a decade that we don’t have Vermilion Flycatcher. 

January is winter, but the Great Wheel of the Seasons never stops turning at St. Marks. By February, Red Maples will begin to flower, male King Rails will start their incessant territorial clucking and the first returning Purple Martins will show up. Each January is a distinct moment in time. It will never again recur. Come down to the refuge and enjoy this year’s Wakulla winter while it lasts.