Spring at the refuge
By DON MORROW
“But life is change, that is how it differs from the rocks, change is its very nature.”– John Wyndham in The Chrysalids, 1955.
It was clear cold and windy the other night and the levee gate at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge was coated with a light glaze of ice. When I had come through the same gate two weeks before, frogs were calling and it was 30 degrees warmer. Soras and a Least Bittern called as I made my way out to my listening spot and waited for sunrise.
I listened to a pair of Barred Owls hooting in a cypress swamp on the edge of the marsh and watched as a silhouetted Osprey flew in to a nest in the bare top of a dead cypress.
A few minutes later, a second Osprey flew in from the opposite direction and landed beside it. The first bird, a male judging by its slightly smaller size, flew up 10 feet and fluttered in the air with its legs dangling before settling back down. This was an abbreviated version of the Sky-Dance, a male Osprey’s mating display.
With the dawn came a flight of waders, mostly Little Blue and Tricolored Herons.
We have gone from unseasonably warm to unseasonably cold, but Spring is unfolding and hot weather awaits us.
Lilies are blooming; Zephyr Lilies on the roadside and white waterlilies in the refuge ponds. Willow and Yaupon are in full flower. Parula warblers are paired up and feeding in the newly unfurled oak leaves at the Double Bridges. Swallow-tailed Kites are cruising along the canopy there and will soon be nesting.
Every day brings some new record of a first-Spring bird sighting. This week I have seen my first Eastern Kingbird perched high on a dead branch and my first Ruby-throated Hummingbird feeding on thistles.
Most of our wintering ducks are gone. They stayed late this year, which surprised me.
February was cold and snowy across Canada and the northern tier of states, but I had anticipated that ducks would start staging northward on schedule. Their numbers stayed at winter levels until the first week in March when they dropped by 75% in a few days. This week, I found only 287 ducks of six species on the interior ponds.
Two thirds of the remaining ducks were teal, mostly Blue-wings. Green-winged Teal numbers are dwindling as ducks that have wintered at the refuge leave. Blue-winged Teal numbers are variable from day-to-day as wintering birds leave and are replaced by northbound migrants coming up from South America.
Shorebirds are also beginning to move. Our drought has increased the area of open mudflats on the interior ponds leading to the best shorebird winter in the 10 years that I have been doing the refuge shorebird surveys.
Shorebird numbers peaked at just over 5,200 birds in late January and have now dropped to around 3,000 birds.
Obscured within the shifting numbers are species shifts. Our wintering western Willets are beginning to leave and I have seen a few of the returning eastern Willets that will breed at the refuge. The first of the Black-necked Stilts has returned and wintering Marbled Godwits have suddenly disappeared.
St. Marks is always changing. On the short-term, there are the lunar and tidal cycles. Annually, there are cycles that include leafing, fruiting and blooming for plants; breeding and raising of young, for animals and the migration of birds.
All of this is overlaid by seasonal shifts in temperature and rainfall, by occasional hurricanes or drought and by the slow climactic shift to a warming earth.
It is mid-March at St. Marks and Spring is happening in a way that is both familiar and yet different from all the Springs before. Come down and see for yourself.
Don Morrow can be reached at donaldcmorrow@gmail.com.