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The Limpkin Times
Apalachee Audubon Society Mission Statement:
Protection of the environment through education,
appreciation and conservation.
January 2021
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Jody at St. Marks's Headwaters
President's Message
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year to All! The AAS board has decided to continue to hold our monthly program meetings via Zoom through May. We are working on completing the line-up and will have some interesting programs for you. In addition, we will hold a few field trips in the open air, starting with a January bird walk for beginners at Lake Elberta.
I hope you will tune into our January program meeting about Leon County forested parks with Leigh Davis, Director of Leon County Parks and Recreation. Jody and I have been exploring some of the trails of these forests.
We were greeted one cool December morning by a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker as we started along the trail at the St. Marks Headwaters Greenway Park. This 755-acre park which opened in 2018 consists of old fields reverting to a mixed pine/hardwood forest as well as an intact bottomland hardwood forest. Both protect the headwaters of the St. Marks River, designated as an Outstanding Florida Water. Approximately 5,000 feet of the upper waters of the St. Marks River flow through the park. I look forward to learning more about this and other forested parks in the care of our Leon County Parks and Recreation Department.
Forests protect water quality and quantity, conserve soil, sequester carbon, clean our air, and provide habitat for wildlife and places for people to relax and be with nature. Let’s celebrate our local forests by learning more about them this winter (January and February program meetings).
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Sincerely,
Donna Legare
President, Apalachee Audubon
In this issue:
Chapter Field Trips
Chapter Programs
Lake Elberta Bat House Installed in December
St Marks 2020 Christmas Bird Count
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Chapter Field Trips
New Year Beginner Bird Walk
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Sunday, January 24, 2021
Time: 8:00 am - 11:00 am EST
Lake Elberta
Is one of your goals for 2021 to learn to bird or to brush up on your birding skills? If so, join Apalachee Audubon on Sunday, January 24 th from 8-11 am EST at Lake Elberta for a beginner bird walk led by Heather Levy and Peter Kleinhenz. No prior birding experience is necessary, and we will go over the basics of birding and a brief introduction to eBird, an online database where birders can share and explore sightings.
This will be a socially distanced event and we require that everyone wears a mask for the duration of the bird walk. To effectively distance, we are limiting this event to 10 people. We ask that you sign-up in advance and please let us know if you cannot make it so we can give the spot to someone else. We will bring plenty of binoculars that will be disinfected beforehand. We hope to see some wintering ducks and some other species that spend the cooler months in Florida, like Hermit Thrushes and Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers! Please email [email protected] to reserve your spot.
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Chapter Programs
The Forests of the Leon County Park System
with Leigh Davis, Director of Leon County Parks and Recreation
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Time: 7:00 pm EST via Zoom
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Leigh Davis is the Director of Leon County Parks and Recreation and has been serving in that capacity for the last 9 years. Her public service career spans two and a half decades, and includes time with the FL House of Representatives, the Florida Association of Counties, and over 15 years with Leon County.
In keeping with this year’s theme of Access to Nature, it is appropriate that we learn more about our local forests, how they are managed, and how to access them. Have you ever visited the forest of huge live oaks at Fred George Park? Did you know there is a unique stand of woods called North Florida Red Oak Woods to be found along the Miccosukee Greenway? We cannot have access to a forest if we do not know about them. Leigh Davis will share information about existing and planned trails and boardwalks in some of the forested parks. She will also familiarize us with her department and how it works. It is amazing how much they get done with so little staff!
After this program, we hope you will hit the trails in these forests and put the e-birding skills you learned during the November AAS presentation to use. We plan to offer field trips to some of these special places after the pandemic (2021-2022 year).
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Pines to Palms: Celebrating our Community Forests
withTom Flanigan and a panel of local forest experts
Thursday, February 18, 2021
Time: 7:00 pm EST via Zoom
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Ochlockonee River State Park
We are lucky to live in one of the most biodiverse hotspots in the United States. Our region features many acres of old-growth pines, cypresses, and oaks. To celebrate our community forests, Apalachee Audubon is partnering with the Old-Growth Forest Network (OGFN), a national network of protected, publicly accessible heritage forests, to highlight and promote the unique old-growth and native forests in the Florida panhandle. Our goal is to increase community awareness, education, and enjoyment of these special places.
Events will take place over two days. There will be a virtual kick-off event Thursday, February 18 from 7-8 PM EST via zoom, which will also serve as our monthly chapter meeting. This program will be a panelist discussion with local forest experts hosted by Tom Flanigan, and other ways to explore and enjoy our forests. Our panelists include Shane Wellendorf, Conservation Coordinator at Tall Timbers Research Station; Robin Will, longtime Supervisory Refuge Ranger and environmental educator at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge; Chuck Hess, Wakulla County Commissioner and retired wildlife biologist on the Apalachicola National Forest; and Terry Baker, CEO Society of American Foresters. Baker also previously held a variety of roles within the USDA Forest Service, including the Apalachicola National Forest.
On Friday, February 19 th , from 11:30 – 2:00 PM EST, there will be an in-person dedication of the Legacy Property of Wakulla State Springs State Park featuring an awards ceremony, luncheon, and an event-related activity. For updates, please check our website at apalachee.org.
The program is free, but registration is required. Use this link to register for the Thursday evening zoom program : http://bit.ly/34YGPiq
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Lake Elberta Bat House Installed in December |
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Apalachee Audubon, through its partnership with the FSU Sustainability Fellows program, installed a four-chambered bat house at Lake Elberta Park. The project was led by Sarah Calzada, an FSU student and last semester's sustainability fellow working with Apalachee Audubon. Sarah researched bat houses and raised the funds necessary to have the Lubee Bat Conservancy from Gainesville construct and install the house on the north side of Lake Elberta. She coordinated with Kenny Welsh, Supervisor of Park Operations with City of Tallahassee, about the site and the installation process. A team of six City of Tallahassee Parks employees worked alongside the two representatives from Lubee Bat Conservancy while AAS Vice President Kathleen Carr recorded the event on Facebook Live.
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Sarah did such a good job fundraising that we received extra funds that will be used towards the purchase of a professionally designed and built interpretive sign about bats. Sarah plans to continue working with us next semester as an FSU Sustainability Fellow to see that this happens. If you would like to contribute towards the interpretive bat sign, please go to the donate button on our website www.apalachee.org (PayPal) or mail a check (P.O Box 1237, Tallahassee, FL 32302) with bat house in the memo.
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St Marks 2020 Christmas Bird Count |
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St Mark's NWR
by Don Morrow
I left my house at 4:30 am on Saturday morning heading for St. Marks NWR. Forty-four other Wakulla and Leon County birders were also getting ready or had already started to bird. They would walk or drive routes and use kayaks to explore the Wakulla and St. Marks Rivers. A boat would launch from the marina in St. Marks to work the nearshore waters of Apalachee Bay. The 82 nd consecutive St. Marks Christmas Bird Count was getting underway.
A Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is a one-day, mid-winter census of all the birds that can be found within a 15-mile diameter circle. The St. Marks Count is centered on a spot across the river from the Town of St. Marks and covers Southeast Wakulla County as far west as Live Oak Island and up to Wakulla Springs.
The first CBCs took place on Christmas Day in 1900. They were started to displace the tradition of Christmas Side Hunts in which people would shoot as many birds as they could find on Christmas Day. Today, Counts are conducted worldwide and take place from mid-December to early January instead of just on Christmas Day. Over 2,500 Counts are held each year, staffed by almost 80,000 volunteer observers.
The first St. Marks Count was on December 22, 1939 at a time when Lighthouse Road and Mounds Pool were newly built and work on the levees was continuing. It was a good day for birding. The low overnight had been in the forties and the day’s high would not reach seventy. The sky was clear and there would be no rain. Larry Givens, the refuge manager, left the original Port Leon headquarters at 7:45 am and, with the help of two other US Fish & Wildlife Service employees, birded by car and boat until 6:00 pm counting 87 species including 5,760 Canada Geese, among which they found the state’s first recorded Greater White-fronted Goose. Because of Given’s dedication – he did the Count solo in 1943 and ’44 when the war stripped him of staff -- the St. Marks Christmas Bird Count has been held every year since.
CBCs are a cross between science and sport. As a scientific effort the data derived is not exact, but it does show broad changes in distributions and population numbers. You can read the St. Marks data over the years and see Canada Geese disappear by the early 1980s as the Southern limit of their wintering range shifted Northward. White-faced Ibis began to appear on the Count about twelve years ago as they expanded their range Eastward. You can see slow decreases in the number of birds over time due to pesticide use and habitat loss.
As a sport, there’s competition among the counts to get high species numbers and find rare birds. The St. Marks Count is among the elite national counts that regularly breaks the 150-species barrier and there is pressure to make sure it stays there. There are target birds and a concerted search for uncommon or rare species. Birders have found twenty-two species on the St. Marks Count that have only been recorded once, rarities like Tropical Kingbird and Lapland Longspur. This is serious competitive birding.
The St. Marks Count Circle is broken up into nine territories. Mine had nine birders, birding in ones and twos. Predawn we found owls and rails. After sunrise we counted shorebirds and ducks. We searched the woods for winter feeding flocks. We got our target birds; American Flamingo and Red-cockaded Woodpecker.
The Covid pandemic has brought changes this year, limiting teams to social pods or socially-distanced and face-masked birders. The usual evening dinner at the Wakulla Springs Lodge to count up the day’s numbers and share news of rarities was cancelled. Everyone just sent their information in by mail and email. Not as much fun and the stories around the table will be missed.
Some counts, faced with the practical difficulties of the pandemic, have chosen to skip a year. The St. Marks Count, though, went forward. How could it stop just because of a pandemic?
After all, Larry Givens didn’t let World War II stop him.
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