Retired Nomads: Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Reserve

After a week with almost no phone service and no usable internet I'm thrilled to have my hotspot back! So, I will post several days of posts one right after the other.

Thursday November 2^nd we visited the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Preserve.

The weather has been cool in the morning, but warming up to 80* later in the day. The guy doing the morning weather said, “it’s a comfortable 50* this morning”. I told Greg that those are two words that don’t belong in the same sentence. (comfortable and 50*)

Today we encountered several groups of mixed flock birds. Cardinals, Catbirds, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, Palm Warblers, Yellow-rumped Warblers, common Yellow-throats, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, Downy Woodpeckers, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Cowbirds & Phoebes.

Birds flying every which-way. It was hard to know which one to follow. But, little birds are notorious for not sitting still for a second. This is where birding with a group helps, so there are more eyes on the birds and easier identification.

Common Yellow-throat

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

the road - it was a 9 mile drive & we got out several times to bird

Common Yellow-throat

Northern Waterthrush?

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Downy Woodpecker

Yellow-rumped Warbler

We stopped for lunch and there were no restaurants that we could find in the small town of Suwannee. (no cell service either so no internet to search for food) So, we pretty much drove all the way back to Old Town. We stopped at the first place we saw and it was very good.

lunch at the Cottage Cafe'

Fried Oyster Sandwich & onion rings

Ribeye Sandwich (we split the onion rings)

After lunch we drove back and checked out another area. The Lower Suwannee Reserve covers a large area so there are many different places to visit it.

There were many butterflies that were attracted to the yellow flowers. The marshes had lots of birds in them that came & went so fast we could never get a good look at them, much less a photo. They were also many Clapper Rails calling to each other. They responded to the call we played, but none came out.

Great Egret

Yellow-rumped Warbler

There were many shore birds here as well.

Semi-palmated Sandpipers & Wilson's Plovers

Wilson's Plover

Osprey eating a fish

Willet

Ruddy Turnstone

Willets & Ruddy Turnstones

Willets

Ruddy Turnstones

Willets

Black-bellied Plover

Wilson's Plover

Palm Warbler

Laughing Gull

We made one more stop before calling it a day and there wasn’t much in the way of wildlife except this Pied-billed Grebe way out in the water. (it was a dot) I kept trying to show Greg where it was and I said it was just past the 3 logs floating out there. He took a couple of blind shots just as the Grebe went under the water. However, once we got home and looked at the photos on the computer Greg says to me “Guess what those logs were?” I knew they weren’t alligator shaped so I zoomed in on them at they had ears and a long striped tail. They were raccoons swimming in the water! 3 of them. I had no idea that they swam. I researched it and while they don’t swim for sport, they will go in the water to use it as a bathroom or to snag a fish to go. Learn something new every day!