Date: 10/19/25 9:41 am From: Don Morrow <donaldcmorrow...> Subject: [NFLbirds] SMNWR--Last Thursday
By mid-October sunrise at St. Marks NWR comes late and it was still
nighttime as I carefully made my way down the levee under the pale light of
a fat crescent moon sitting in a dark star-spattered sky. It was a cool
morning, in the upper fifties, but I was still watching the levee surface
for any dark shape that might be a gator. When I looked up again, the
eastern sky was cut by a luminous wavy white band, which stood out starkly
against the night sky.
Space X had launched a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral earlier that morning.
Although dawn was still a half hour away, light from the sun, rising
somewhere out in the Atlantic, was hitting the upper atmosphere,
illuminating the rocket’s contrail. From the marsh around me, I could hear
the squonk of baby gators and from the distant treeline, the hooting monkey
call of a Barred Owl. I watched the high-tech pyrotechnics as the contrail
slowly shifted colors and faded as the sky lightened.
Mid-October is a transitional time in Fall migration. Transmigrants are
still streaming through, but our wintering birds are beginning to arrive.
Yellow Warblers are still passing through the refuge and will continue to
do so into early November. I saw lots of Palm Warblers down from the boreal
forests of western Canada, most are headed to the West Indies. Almost all
of our wintering Palm Warblers are the “yellow” subspecies from eastern
Canada. They will soon be arriving on the refuge. A large flock of
Blue-winged Teal had stopped on Mounds Pool 3. Most will continue on, a few
as far as Brazil. With them were a handful of Northern Shovelers that will
overwinter in the big islands of the Caribbean, perhaps Hispaniola or Cuba.
October sees not only transmigrants, but also the arrival of the refuge’s
wintering species. Eastern Phoebes and Swamp Sparrows are suddenly common
and I saw my first Yellow-rumped Warbler of the season. Among the
shorebirds arriving for the winter, I found Wilson’s Snipe and the first
fifty Dunlin of the season. By next month there may be two thousand Dunlin
at St. Marks.
Our current drought has dropped the water levels on most of the ponds and
pools, although Stony Bayou 1 still has water. There, I found a large flock
of waders; Tricolored and Little Blue Herons, along with twenty dark ibis,
a mix of Glossy and White-faced. These two ibis species are common at the
refuge in winter. Glossy Ibis breed on the refuge and used to be a regular
sight at the refuge in summer before the collapse of the big wading bird
rookery on East River Pool. Nowadays, Glossy Ibis are scarce at St. Marks
in the warmer months.
The dropping water on Lighthouse Pond is attracting birds. I had over eight
hundred birds, mostly shorebirds. Of the eleven species of shorebirds on
the pond, almost half were Short-billed Dowitchers, but there were American
Oystercatchers, Marbled Godwits, Willets, and a flock of over a hundred
Ruddy Turnstones. Black Skimmers, Laughing Gulls and both Royal and
Forster’s Terns were also resting on the pond.
My last stop was at Headquarters Pond, which is now a mudflat spotted with
lily pads. Carefully scanning the exposed mud, I found twenty-six Pectoral
Sandpipers. These birds are coming from the Arctic, some even from the
Siberian Arctic. They are headed to their wintering grounds on the Pampas
of South America.
I ended up birding the refuge for seven hours, starting in the predawn
darkness and ending on a glorious blue sky Fall day. The government is
still shut down, but the refuge is open. Come down to St. Marks. Your very
own glorious Fall day awaits you.
