Mid-May at the refuge
By DON MORROW
It is the second half of May at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. Our winter birds have left. Migration – the cool part with warblers, tanagers and grosbeaks – is over, but shorebirds are continuing to move through in diminishing numbers. Chickadees are feeding young at the Double Bridges and the Common Gallinules at Headquarters Pond are beginning their second broods.
Buttonbush, elderberry and wild rose are in full flower. Clumps of orange lantana along the levees are attracting pollinators: Queens, Monarchs, Black Swallowtails, skippers, bumblebees and solitary bees. They are also a good place to watch for Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Swamp dogwood and poison ivy have finished blooming for the year. The dogwood fruit matures quickly and will provide summer food for vireos and woodpeckers. Poison ivy fruit ripens slowly and will feed kinglets, sapsuckers and Yellow-rumped Warblers when they return.
When I arrived at the refuge on Wednesday, Chuck-wills-Widows were calling and pig frogs were grunting from out in the marshes where Common Nighthawks were silently gliding. The sun rises early in late May and I had little time to get out to the end of Stony Bayou 2. A lone Wood Duck was sitting on a cypress branch as the sun rose and I began a shorebird survey.
Each shorebird year follows a similar pattern with minor variations. Our wintering shorebird numbers and spring migration numbers have been robust, but are now going through their seasonal drop as the last of the wintering Dunlin leave and trans-migrants finish moving through. I found only 110 Dunlin on the refuge. At their winter high, there were almost 4,000.
The remaining shorebird migrants moving through were mainly Semipalmated Sandpipers. May is the peak of their migration period and they represented almost half of the 626 shorebirds that I saw. There were also Least Sandpipers, Spotted Sandpipers, Whimbrels, Semipalmated Plovers, Black-bellied Plovers, and Short-billed Dowitchers. About half of the black-bellys and short-bills were in winter plumage, indicating that they are yearling birds that will remain at the refuge for their first summer.
The refuge has shorebirds that breed on the interior ponds; Wilson’s Plover, Black-necked Stilt, Willet and Killdeer. One of the continuing effects of the drought is a thick growth of grasses on the mudflats, which can make it hard to see shorebirds. However, Wilson’s Plovers can be found on Stony Bayou 1 and Tower Pond. Stilts are easily seen on Mounds Pool 3 and East River Pool. Willets lurk everywhere and I had a pair of Killdeer on Stony Bayou 2 that I suspect are breeding there.
Barn Swallow numbers seem low at the refuge this year. They are not breeding at several of their usual sites. Least Tern numbers also seem low with most having moved over to Mounds Pool 3 and, just generally, bird numbers seem a little low, possibly due to the drought. However, I managed to log seventy-five species at the refuge during my survey trip.
St. Marks is drifting into summer with its heat, humidity and, hopefully, thunderstorms. Summer mornings at the refuge are incredibly beautiful, but they are an ephemeral quantity and dissipate with the mid-morning heat. You must adapt to the rhythm of the day to experience them.
Set an alarm, get up early and come down to the refuge. There is much to see here.
Don Morrow can be reached at donaldcmorrow@gmail.com.