Anastasia - Chapter Meeting and Field Trip

What: St. Johns Audubon Chapter Meeting

When:  Monday, May 20

Where: St. Augustine Public Library

Time: 6:15 PM for presentation, 6:00 PM for social time

What: Field Trip

When: Saturday, May 25

Where: Anastasia State Park, meet at the concession stand

Time:  9 AM to 12 noon

We hope you'll turn out this Monday night for our last Audubon Chapter Meeting before the summer. As you know, last year, Anastasia State Park hosted a colony of Least Terns and they are back this year. But the park is also home to other imperiled species. Cristy Leonard, park specialist and a ranger will be presenting about the Wildlife Treasures of Anastasia State Park at the St. Johns Audubon program meeting this Monday May 20^th at the Main Library 1960 N. Ponce De Leon Blvd, St. Augustine.

They will talk about the Anastasia Island beach mouse, an endemic species found nowhere else in the world and listed as endangered at the federal level., as well as about Gopher Tortoises, a Florida threatened species, so important to our coastal ecosystems that we have to forgive them for eating a Least Tern egg here and then…

The program is free and open to all, please help pass the word around.

In conjunction with this talk we will be having a field trip to Anastasia on Saturday the 25th. Meet at 9 AM at the concession stand. We may catch site of a gopher tortoise or two, and hope to see some of the many birds that make Anastasia their home or breeding ground. It's Memorial Day weekend but we should be there ahead of the crowds! We hope to see you then.

Alpine Groves Nature Walk recap

One never knows what Mother Nature will have in store for us in May, so how nice that she smiled this morning for our nature walk at Alpine Groves. It was a glorious 60 degrees and there was a tang in the air that invigorated. The sun was shining, and dappling along the pathways through the trees.

Alas, however, not one single person showed up for the nature walk! What a shame. They really missed a perfect morning for being out of doors in the crisp fresh air. No other birders showed up, but there were mothers with babies in strollers, and dog walkers, and other folks taking advantage of the excellent day.

As a birding day the count was light, but would undoubtedly have been higher if I was better at birding by ear, or getting better glimpses of little feathered creatures flitting high up in the canopy. Birding is often about "the one that got away" and by sight or by ear I'm sure I missed at least 4-6 additional species. If only someone else had been with me to help...

But I did have good sights like the spotted sandpiper, a first for me at Alpine Groves.  And I could not have asked for a better day to be there. However it was also a quiet day, with no raptors soaring overhead, no wading birds dotting the shores of the river.

Audubon Magazine recently featured an article on people now chasing dragonflies and damselflies as many of us chase birds. To be honest - bugs are not my thing! Give me the feathered friends every day. But if you are one of the dragonfly hunters here's one you can try to ID for us.

In the meantime, this is the list of birds I saw or heard this morning:

Spotted Sandpiper
Royal Tern
Mourning Dove
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Pileated Woodpecker
Blue Jay
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Carolina Wren
Northern Parula
Pine Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Northern Cardinal
Red-winged Blackbird

Alpine Groves Nature Walk

Where: Alpine Groves Park

Date: Tuesday, May 14

Time: 9:00 - 11:00 AM

Meeting: At the parking lot at the end of the road, closest to the river

Tomorrow is our last neighborhood nature walk of the season, so we hope you can come just us at Alpine Groves Park.  Alpine Groves is located along the historic St. Johns River in the western part of the county. If you don't know this park you owe yourself a chance to come discover it. If you do know the park then you know what a true gem it is!

Along the river you can see wading birds, nesting wood ducks, gulls and terns. The woodlands are home to seasonal, migrant and resident warblers, woodpeckers. Bald eagles and ospreys can be seen soaring overhead.

Nature walks are shorter and less strenuous than some of the field trips and are appropriate for most. We will start at the end of the park near the river and go out onto the fishing pier looking for water birds of all sorts, and then will walk through the woods looking for and listening for woodland birds. The woodland path is paved, so wheelchair or stroller accessible.

This will be our last nature walk for the season, but keep in mind we do have an upcoming chapter meeting on  Monday, May 20, at the main library in St. Augustine, 6 PM where Kristi Leonard from Anastasia State Park will talk about the beach mouse and the gopher tortoise, following by our last field trip of the season - also at Anastasia State Park on Saturday, May 25 - 9:00 AM to 12:00 noon. We hope you can join us for those events also!

A great meeting

St. Johns Audubon President Dan Hayes kicked off a great meeting last night, with many members reporting interesting bird sightings they have had in the last month. He then introduced us to our speaker for the evening, biologist and educator Mike Adams.

Mike had brought with him an eclectic series of displays relating to his topic of discussion, the conservation management of his property - the 94-acre Saturiwa Conservation Area.

Mike gave a fascinating lecture about the history of his property, located on the historic St. Johns River, both  since his own purchase of the property in 1989, and the years before that. He also spent quite a bit of time on the natural history of the property also, and the many species of birds and animals that frequent the place at different times of the year.

Later he answered questions from the audience, and offered his ecological field guide (ISBN 13: 978-0-615-69807-6). Note to Audubon members and fans, Mike offers guided tours of his property, and we plan to put him our our Field Trip agenda for the 2013-14 season!

In the meantime, more to come later, but note on your calendars:
May 14 - nature walk at Alpine Groves Park
May 20 - next Audubon chapter meeting at the St. Augustine Public Library
May 25 - field trip to Anastasia State Park

And then hopes that everyone will have a great summer. We may have more to follow here as well about the Shorebird Bird Stewarding program.

April Chapter meeting

Where: St. Augustine Public Library 

When:  Monday, April 29

Time:  6:00 - 8:00 PM

Our next chapter meeting is coming up tomorrow night. Alas, our scheduled speaker had to back out at the last minute due to an unexpected surgery. But we'll still have a program to present to you! And other birders there to share experiences with. The meetings are always fun, so we hope you'll join us tomorrow night.

A sunny day for the birds

It was a warm and sunny day for our Neighborhood Nature Walk at the St. Johns Agricultural Center on Tuesday. What a change from last week's weather. There were five of us who showed up to see what birds might be seen on a warm spring morning.

There were mockingbirds a-plenty, singing so lustily that they nearly drowned out any other birds we might have had a hope of hearing. There were a few birds heard faintly in the distance - a northern parula, a Carolina chickadee, but it was hard to hear others.

Sadly we didn't see as many as we had hoped either. There were no herons, egrets, ibises or water birds in any of the ponds we passed. And we had hoped to see some warblers but our hunt was sadly lacking in that regard also.

We saw a single Savannah sparrow hopping in the distance.

And one of the overheard wires gave us several good views of a loggerhead shrike.

One serious hunt finally yielded a few good views of a brown thrasher, who had mostly kept himself just hidden enough to be hard to spot, ID, or photograph.

Among some of the good birds we didn't get photos of were the multiple killdeer, a great crested flycatcher, and a brown-headed nuthatch! Probably our best bird was the yellow-bellied sapsucker we all saw right in the parking lot as we were getting ready to start out on the walk.

However in my previous blog post, when I had said we might see other wildlife as well, it was not alligators I had in mind!

Despite the lack of birds it was still a nice morning to be out and about with other like-mined people, all sharing a common interest and enjoying the birds. Our total tally came to 18 species (unless someone reminds me of one or two I forgot) - those species being:


Turkey Vulture
Red-shouldered Hawk
Killdeer
Mourning Dove
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Great Crested Flycatcher
Loggerhead Shrike
Carolina Chickadee
Brown-headed Nuthatch
Eastern Bluebird
Northern Mockingbird
Brown Thrasher
European Starling
Northern Parula
Yellow-rumped warbler
Savannah Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Red-winged Blackbird

Nature Walk - Agricultural Center

Where: St. Johns County Agricultural Center

When: Tuesday, April 9, 9:00-11:00 AM

Meet: at front of the Ag Center

We hope you can join us tomorrow for our next scheduled Neighborhood Nature Walk. The Ag Center is always a favorite spot for nature walks because of its diversity which includes a native plant arboretum, vegetable gardens, fields for sparrows, ponds for long-legged waders, and power lines and fences which often sport bluebirds, doves, kestrels and more. You never know what you’ll find there. Everyone is
welcome on this easy walk.

Certainly we had a wonderful variety of birds seen here on our previous Nature Walk at the Ag Center, back in November. Now let's see what sort of birds the spring season may bring us!

And not only birds! We may see other wildlife there as well. The weather reports are predicting a nice morning, so it should be a great day for the birds.