Wednesday, July 18, 2018

St Mark's National Wildlife Refuge

St Mark's National Wildlife Refuge was last weekend's outing. We like walking around and looking at the birds and alligators. We have put it on the calendar to go back in October when it's cooler as the temperatures were extremely high.  It's no fun to walk around in scorching heat but I was determined to get some bird photos.

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I like this photo warning you about gators as a dragonfly landed right as I was getting the photo.  See it to the upper left?

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A small alligator sunning on a rock.  We saw a few in the water but just as I tried to get a photo they'd duck the heads underneath.

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 Birds

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 Lining up looking for fish.  There was a gorgeous red winged blackbird on the way towards the parking area but I wasn't fast enough to get the shot.  Wish I had seen more of that variety.  Hoping to see lots of ducks and more birds out when we return in late Autumn.

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 I had to sneak up on this guy. Each time he saw me he'd fly away across to the other beach area.

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Hard to see this bird near the water.

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We covered up and used sun screen.  It was in the mid 90's and very humid, strong sun.

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Lily pads, flowers and deep blue waters.  Probably a gator hiding in there as we heard one making noise in that area.  Sounds like a big bull frog.

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It started clouding up, still hot, but we were going to get caught in rain so Doug put the top up. It was nice to get back to A/C anyway.

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It's still too hot to eat outside on the porch - looking forward to that weather in a few months.  So we had dinner inside again.  A cool low cal dinner too.  I tried a new recipe for a Greek Chicken and Chickpea salad.  It was supposed to be a Power Bowl and combine all the ingredients but, as usual, I changed things and deconstructed it.  I'll be posting about that in a few days.

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That's it for now.  Happy Wednesday!


4 comments:

  1. I love that you share your outings with your readers! It looks like you both had a very nice time even with the heat.

    I love that you have each other to spend time with. I miss having my husband to do things with.

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  2. Birding and bird photography are fascinating to do. I hope you have good information about where and when the birds are most visible and the most birds are there. Songbirds don't like hot weather either, and often hide in wooded spots during the heat of the day, which makes for disappointing birding until near dusk.

    best... mae at maefood.blogspot.com

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  3. I enjoyed these pics. I love the birds and seeing the water and foliage makes me miss Florida - we go back in October! HOWEVER.... I have such anxiety about those alligators. Watch out! Dinner looks delicious.

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  4. Love the pictures and can relate to the need to go back when it's cooler. It's hard to do much of anything outside right now. I was trying to plan a weekend trip for next weekend to Birmingham or Chattanooga but almost everything we'd want to do is outside and trudging around in the heat and humidity is just impossible! The alligators terrify me. I don't think I'm irrationally scared of that many things (well except chickens. The random half fly thing they do makes me nervous) but alligators seriously creep me out!

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