Day 107: April 16th – Princess Place Preserve

Sunny, 80 degrees, with a moderate east wind

       Change of plans….We originally had the St. Augustine Alligator Farm scheduled as our destination today, but figured we’d stop off for a short tour of Princess Place just north of Palm Coast.  Well, we just ran into too many interesting and challenging birds to cut the trip short and we never did make to the gator farm.  That’ll have to wait for another day.

     When we first arrived at the preserve, we were greeted by two road barriers saying that the bridge into the heart of the preserve was washed out and you could not pass beyond that point.  That point was two miles down the dirt road, so we figured we’d just see what we could find in those two miles.  A hundred yards past the preserve entrance, we had a Common yellowthroat calling from what seemed to be two feet off the road in the palmettos.  We parked the car, using it as a blind, and waited for the bird to pop up into our field of view…..and waited, and waited, and waited.  You could tell he was moving from location to location, never too far into the woods to dissuade us from waiting a little longer, but he never gave us a shot.  On we went.

       A bit further into the preserve, I heard my first Yellow-throated vireo of the year.  Again we parked the car, and the bird was immediately in view.  Now this is more like it!  He flew overhead, perched on a wire long enough to give us a nice image (even if a phone line is not the ideal setting for a nature photograph), and stayed near the roadside.  Finally, he sat up in a tree for a better photo for the blog.

Yellow-throated vireo

     We continued on and had several warblers calling to keep us interested.  Then I heard one of the birds I had been hoping for.  Two years ago, when Sharon and I were up here with birding buddies Joe and Don, we had nice looks at the Summer tanager.  I immediately recognized the song that sounded like a robin with severe laryngitis.   We soon found the bird and although the lighting could have been better (excuses, excuses), he still hung around long enough to capture an image or two.

Summer tanager

       We finally got down to the campground where there were two more barriers blocking the road as promised.  We drove into the grounds and parked the car.  I walked back to the area where the road was closed to vehicular traffic and walked out into the marshy area where we had King rails in the past.  All was silent until I played his call on the iPod.  He scared the daylights out of me as he answered from not more than 10 feet away.  Ten feet away that might as well have been 10 miles as far as getting an image was concerned.  The bird called on several more occasions but remained hidden in the marsh grasses.  Finally, one bird took flight.  By the time I had the camera up to my eye, he was down again and that was that.

 

       Walking back to the car where Sharon was birding closer to the campground, I came upon a pretty interesting sight of which I did get a backlit image.  There, 40 yards down the road in front of me sat an Osprey and a Double-crested cormorant perched upon the same branch, not more than 5 feet form one another.  Not the greatest photo, but a memorable image recorded in my mind’s eye if nothing else. 

     And so,  the Alligator Farm will have to wait. But we were certainly glad that we decided to travel down this dirt road and to the barriers where the “best” part of the preserve was out of reach.  You never know unless you go.