Date: 5/21/26 12:11 pm From: Don Morrow <donaldcmorrow...> Subject: [NFLbirds] Late May at SMNWR
It is the second half of May at St. Marks NWR. Our winter birds have left.
Migration; the cool part with warblers, tanagers and grosbeaks, is over,
but shorebirds are continuing to move through in diminishing numbers.
Chickadees are feeding young at the Double Bridges and the Common
Gallinules at Headquarters Pond are beginning their second broods.
Buttonbush, elderberry and wild rose are in full flower. Clumps of orange
lantana along the levees are attracting, pollinators; Queens, Monarchs,
Black Swallowtails, skippers, bumblebees and solitary bees. They are also a
good place to watch for Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Swamp dogwood and
poison ivy have finished blooming for the year. The dogwood fruit matures
quickly and will provide summer food for vireos and woodpeckers. Poison ivy
fruit ripens slowly and will feed kinglets, sapsuckers and Yellow-rumped
Warblers when they return.
When I arrived at the refuge on Wednesday, Chuck-wills-Widows were calling
and pig frogs were grunting from out in the marshes where Common Nighthawks
were silently gliding. The sun rises early in late May and I had little
time to get out to the end of Stony Bayou 2. A lone Wood Duck was sitting
on a cypress branch as the sun rose and I began a shorebird survey.
Each shorebird year follows a similar pattern with minor variations. Our
wintering shorebird numbers and spring migration numbers have been robust,
but are now going through their seasonal drop as the last of the wintering
Dunlin leave and trans-migrants finish moving through. I found only 110
Dunlin on the refuge. At their winter high, there were almost four thousand.
The remaining shorebird migrants moving through were mainly Semipalmated
Sandpipers. May is the peak of their migration period and they represented
almost half of the 626 shorebirds that I saw. There were also Least
Sandpipers, Spotted Sandpipers, Whimbrels, Semipalmated Plovers,
Black-bellied Plovers, and Short-billed Dowitchers. About half of the
black-bellys and short-bills were in winter plumage, indicating that they
are yearling birds that will remain at the refuge for their first summer.
The refuge has shorebirds that breed on the interior ponds; Wilson’s
Plover, Black-necked Stilt, Willet and Killdeer. One of the continuing
effects of the drought is a thick growth of grasses on the mudflats, which
can make it hard to see shorebirds. However, Wilson’s Plovers can be found
on Stony Bayou 1 and Tower Pond. Stilts are easily seen on Mounds Pool 3
and East River Pool. Willets lurk everywhere and I had a pair of Killdeer
on Stony Bayou 2 that I suspect are breeding there.
Barn Swallow numbers seem low at the refuge this year. They are not
breeding at several of their usual sites. Least Tern numbers also seem low
with most having moved over to Mounds Pool 3 and, just generally, bird
numbers seem a little low, possibly due to the drought. However, I managed
to log seventy-five species at the refuge during my survey trip.
St. Marks is drifting into summer with its heat, humidity and, hopefully,
thunderstorms. Summer mornings at the refuge are incredibly beautiful, but
they are an ephemeral quantity and dissipate with the mid-morning heat. You
must adapt to the rhythm of the day to experience them.
Set an alarm, get up early and come down to the refuge. There is much to
see here.
