Herons and Babies on the Wacissa

Another really great paddling day so I headed out to the Wacissa to see what I could see.

Lots of great blue herons, for one thing! (Or possibly the same few great blue herons spotted several times...) This one was posing at the river's edge:


Complete concentration--



However, he grew tired of my presence and left.



I paddled into Blue Spring. The water was very bizarre on this day--extremely cloudy and murky, you could not see more than a couple of feet into the spring. I've never seen it like that. We recently had very heavy rain, perhaps that has something to do with it.

On the way out I saw a yellow crowned night heron perched overhead in a tree:


...and then it saw me...



...and left. I continued on downstream. I was purposely ignoring the egrets, but then saw this one in a tree. Since it was in the shade and taking a quick photo would not require changing any camera settings, I went ahead and got one. Its left leg is hanging down but I don't think this is injury-related. I took this a bit on-the-fly as I drifted by, but I seem to recall that the egret was getting itself settled on the branch at the time, and moving around a bit. Could have been just stretching.



I got about two and a half miles downstream before I decided to turn around. At about that time I heard very quiet peeping coming from a tussock in the middle of the river, so I paddled over to see if I could locate the source.

Baby purple gallinules! And larger than I expected since this is my first sighting of any on this river. One adult and several babies were in one grassy clump, and another adult was with a single juvenile in another tussock about six feet away. I parked in the surface growth to keep from drifting away and concentrated on the single baby. Here it is with the adult--the white arrow points to the young'un:



Well, that adult flew off to the far edge of the river after I took that, leaving the little one all alone.



It decided to make its way across the water to join the rest of the family.


Whoops! Deep water!



It made it just fine and I moved on to leave them in peace.

A tricolored heron watched from a tree branch.



I continued upstream. For the first two hours of this paddle, I had not encountered any other humans at all, which was strange but delightful. I did pass other paddlers as the day went on, though.

Another great blue heron.



As I paddled upstream, I spotted a pair of wood ducks crossing from one side of the river to the other. I got too close for the female's comfort and she took off, leaving the male (you can see the splash that resulted from her exit directly in front of him).



He decided to join her and took off as well.


I continued upstream. Blue Spring was busier this time so I did not linger there. Back in the main river, I decided to take another lotus photo. Once I get these lotus photos home, I can't seem to leave them alone. Last time I applied a soft focus filter to it. This time I was going to post it after the usual processing....but on the way to doing that I ended up checking to see how it would look as a black-and-white. And so once again, a tweaked lotus.


They continue with the changes to the ramp area and now have set concrete posts in the ground to prevent vehicle access to the canoe/kayak launching area. The ramp was completely blocked by a group of FSU students collecting samples of something. Later in the summer, the ramp will be completely blocked by small children swimming, adults, and dogs (the new sign prohibiting dogs from this area is having no effect and will continue to have no effect since there is no one there to enforce it. I love dogs at all times except when I am in the kayak). I lucked out on this day since I spotted someone I knew in the grassy area and so could pull up to the old access and get help carrying the boat to the car.

I hope this wonderful weather continues for a while! Stand by.
- posted by Peggy @ 10:53 AM 6 comments

 
Egrets on the Wakulla

A perfect paddling day! Blue skies, not too hot, a light breeze. So DH and I packed up the kayaks and headed to the Wakulla. Many other paddlers had the same idea, and yet we often had sections of river to ourselves.


I had expected to see a lot of gators on this trip but we only passed two small ones and one fairly large one. Here is one of the smaller ones watching us go by.



This river doesn't always have a lot of birds on it, and aside from the egrets, they were scarce today (I did see those two big mix-breed ducks again near the boat ramp, though--they must be pets, or at least fed regularly by someone; they seem somewhat out of place). It wasn't until we were drifting downstream from the upper ramp that I spotted the first egret. This one was off the main river and I loved the way a beam of sunlight came down and illuminated the bird


A little farther on we came to another egret fishing among the cypress trees and knees.



This one did not like being watched and decided to find a more private place to fish.



Buh bye...



This was my day for spotting things in small sections of sunlight. These gorgeous white flowers, which are scattered here and there along the river's edge, were shining brightly.



We were on the water so long we had to change our plans to continue on Hwy 98 to get some fresh shrimp to take home for dinner.

I hope to get back to the Wakulla again soon--this is an ideal time to be on the river. The banks are lined with white, purple, and pink blooming flowers and rushes and it's just beautiful. We were surprised not to see any manatees on this trip. We asked a few other paddlers if they had spotted any, and they also had not. Maybe next time.

I had planned to get back to Cedar Key this coming week but have postponed that trip. I intend to get out paddling on day trips, though. Stand by.
- posted by Peggy @ 1:09 PM 2 comments