Happy Birthday St. Marks

On October 31, 1931 the St. Marks Migratory Bird Refuge was established on 53 acres of salt marsh and grass flats adjacent to the St. Marks Lighthouse. This was the birth of the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, which has since grown to include almost 80,000 acres of land and water stretching for over thirty miles across three Gulf coastal counties in the Big Bend of Florida. Today, the National Wildlife Refuge System has a wider mandate to protect all wildlife, but at the time that St. Marks was created it was intended primarily as a refuge for wintering waterfowl.  

St. Mark’s has Wood Ducks year-round and Blue-winged Teal from August through early June. October is the month that wintering ducks begin to show up in numbers.  However, the prime duck viewing period at the refuge is November through February when we can have nineteen species on an average day and over two thousand birds. 

In total thirty-nine waterfowl species have been recorded at St. Marks, including Florida’s first record of Greater White-fronted Goose in 1939.  Up to twenty-four species of waterfowl can be seen at St. Marks over the course of a winter season and another five species are rare, but regular and should be looked for. This is a very good place for winter waterfowl.

During the winter months, Green-winged and Blue-winged Teal are the most common species on the refuge’s interior ponds, followed by Bufflehead, Lesser Scaup and Redhead. Offshore in Apalachee Bay it’s mainly the diving ducks, Bufflehead, Lesser Scaup and Redhead. Five percent of the North American Redhead population, about thirty-five thousand ducks, are found on Apalachee Bay and nearby waters every winter feeding on seagrasses. 

Today, I did my first duck survey of the season. I waited on the North levee of Stony Bayou II for the morning Wood Duck flight at first light. An almost-full moon hung low in the Western sky and bathed the marshes in light. The moon slowly set shifting from bone white to deep amber before it winked out leaving me in the fading cold darkness of predawn. With first light came a minor Wood Duck flight – nine birds. A good start.

I then spent five hours slowly driving a circuit that covered all of the interior ponds and the nearshore waters at the Lighthouse. I recorded 220 ducks of 12 species. A good number of ducks and great diversity for this time of year. Almost half were Blue-winged Teal and a third of the remainder were Redhead, but I also had Northern Pintail, Green-winged Teal, American Wigeon, Gadwall, Ring-necked Duck, both Scaup, a lone Ruddy Duck and the morning Wood Ducks. This may just presage a good duck season at the refuge.

Halloween is St. Marks NWR’s birthday and it’s your refuge! Go to https://www.stmarksrefuge.org/shop-online and buy yourself a present. 

You’ll be helping to support the refuge and the ducks will appreciate it.