Summer Birding

July is the hottest and wettest month at St. Marks NWR. It has stiff competition from June and August, but it narrowly wins. Friday morning was sultry with a light wind out of the West as I walked out the Double Dikes under a fat half-moon. The sky was already turning a pale blue in the predawn with low smoky-blue clouds on the Eastern horizon. Behind me a towering thunderhead was starkly white, reflecting light from the below-the-horizon sun. The thunderhead showed no lightning and I deemed it safe to head out.

Lately I’ve been walking out on the cross levee between the Stony Bayou Pools in the morning. By walking halfway out, I can cover all of Stony Bayou I with my scope, plus it’s a good sunrise spot. It’s officially closed while the USFWS repairs damage from Hurricane Michael, but I’ll be off the levee and back to my car by 7:30 am, before the construction crews arrive.

I was out on Stony Bayou I to check on shorebird migration. Shorebirds are creatures of winds and tides. I’m hoping that a sunrise full tide will push birds in from the coast. Early nesters and failed nesters are beginning to move South and are mixed in with the summer birds. I found Spotted & Pectoral Sandpipers, Short-billed Dowitchers, Black-bellied, Semipalmated & Wilson’s Plovers, a handful of Marbled Godwits, both Greater & Lesser Yellowlegs and a few Willets.

Going beyond identification and checking to see what plumage a bird is in can tell you its story. In early-migrating shorebirds, adults leave first and, because they won’t molt until they reach their wintering grounds, any shorebird in breeding plumage in July can be presumed to be a returning migrant. 

Half of the Dowitchers were in breeding plumage indicating migrants. The Black-bellied Plovers are in their winter plumage showing that they all oversummered at the refuge.

Willets are a special case. Just over a foot tall, these drably colored gray shorebirds have a striking black-and-white wing pattern when they fly. Willets are found at St. Marks year-round, but they aren’t resident. The birds that breed here are from the Eastern population that breeds along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. By the end of the month almost all the Eastern birds will be gone, headed for their wintering grounds on the South American coast. They will be replaced by Western Willets that breed along ponds and lakes in the interior West and winter at the refuge. 

Currently, most of the Willets on the refuge are from the Eastern population. They are easy to pick out. The Eastern birds are darker and stouter than the Western birds. Over the course of the month, the ratio of Eastern and Western birds will shift. By mid-August there will be no Eastern Willets.

There were Black Skimmers, Great & Snowy Egrets and Tricolored and Great Blue Herons scattered around the pond. I also found Reddish Egrets and Roseate Spoonbills. They nest South of here and disperse Northward after breeding.

The thunderhead went through a range of colors just before sunrise as the light shifted, then it began to make a rumbling sound. That was my signal to head back.

It was a good morning of Summer birding.