Two Trips in One Post

As I may have mentioned in the previous post, DH was on vacation this past week. We went paddling to the Wakulla on Wednesday; however, with our busy week of doing this, that, and the other thing, I had no time to process the photos. And then we went paddling on the Suwannee and Withlacoochee rivers yesterday. So I am combining the two trips into one post. The Wakulla is a wonderful river but lacks the wildlife of the Wacissa, and the Suwannee and Withlacoochee have even less, so there are not many photos (but there's a video!).

The turtles on the Wakulla are far more complacent than those on the Wacissa. These guys just sit there and watch you go by, unless you get very close.



There are usually more gators to be seen on this river (which is interesting since people swim in all sections of this river, unlike the Wacissa where the swimming is limited to the spring areas), but we only saw a couple, and those only because we were looking for them. They were well camouflaged and small.



We didn't paddle all the way to the top bridge but only a little more than halfway. On the way back downstream we saw this cormorant that had caught a fish that was proving to be a challenge for it, size-wise.



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Cormorants were the only birds we saw on this trip. This one let us pass by behind it fairly closely.



We saw many manatees, including a baby one. The reflections on the water make photos problematic. I had my underwater camera, which is difficult to use from the kayak since there is no way to see what the lens is pointing at. The water was murky on that day. Nonetheless, I have a very short (murky) video of some manatees that we spent some time with. In the first very short section you may be able to make out the baby manatee swimming above an adult. Also note the white scars on the back of the large one--that's what happens when people in power boats don't bother to slow down in areas known to contain manatees. Sorry about the muffled talking--I didn't think the microphone would pick that up!



So that was the Wakulla trip. Despite the lack of birds, I enjoy that river and plan to get back there again soon.

Yesterday we decided to go to Suwannee River State Park with the kayaks and paddle the rivers. This park has a boat ramp that puts you in the Suwannee. If you paddle to the left from the ramp, you soon reach the confluence of the Suwannee and Withlacoochee rivers. We prefer the Withlachoochee--it's a beautiful green color (the Suwannee is tea-colored due to the tannins in the water) and very clear. So we headed up that way.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are very familiar with the shoreline of the Wacissa, my usual destination. The edge of the river water is lost in vegetation, and in fact often extends, swamp-like, far into the woods at the shoreline. The edges are lined with leafy greenery. The Withlacoochee is very different! It is lined with limestone rocks in front of, in most places, towering high banks. There is no surface vegetation whatsoever in the part near where the rivers meet (making for even less wildlife than the Wakulla!). It's more stark, but no less beautiful for it.



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If one needs to answer the call of nature while paddling the Wacissa, and to nearly the same extent on the Wakulla, one is basically out of luck. The shoreline is not conducive to getting out of the boat. This is one area where the Withlacoochee has a great advantage. And not just in terms of getting out of the boat due to necessity but for quick dips in the river to cool off!



Since we were there on July 4th, we came to several large groups of people enjoying the river water at areas of wide sandy edges. We found a deserted spot at our turnaround point. Submerging in that cool water felt wonderful!

I hope to get back to the Wacissa again this coming week--I miss my birds! Stand by.
- posted by Peggy @ 2:01 PM 3 comments

 
The Coolest Place to Be

It really does seem 10 degrees cooler on the water, particularly when you have a light breeze wafting across the 73-degree surface. Clearly I am not the only paddler to have discovered this; there were several others on the Wacissa.

As I was drifting downstream, I saw this well-camouflaged young night heron. If I had not been looking for such things along the river's edge, it never would have caught my eye.



This was a day to just drift with the gentle current rather than make the effort to paddle (at least during the downstream part...). What a great way to spend a morning.

This snowy egret was sitting on a jagged stump as I floated by.



I guess it didn't like the look or sound of the camera (or me), since it decided to leave.



And off it went downriver.



The gators were also out enjoying the sunshine--most of the ones I saw were small. Must be the most recent batch.



I saw a young ibis perched along the side of the river. I assumed it was alone; I didn't see any others. But when I drifted on over to see if I could get a picture of it, several more flew out from the nearby trees. This one stayed where it was, though.



I turned around after a couple of hours of meandering downstream. There was little wind and the current never picked up, so it was an easy, slow paddle back upstream. I spotted a female wood duck with babies swimming along the edge. When she saw me, she stopped, which caused the babies to all sort of mill around, not sure why they were stopped. Several looked over at me, but didn't seem particularly alarmed. I took the picture and moved on so they could continue on their own little meander.



At the time I took that photo of the woodie babies, I was paddling between the river's edge and a line of reedy tussocks, with the main part of the river on the other side of the reeds. Immediately after leaving the woodies, I saw the resident pelican coming swooping downstream only inches from the water. Not much I could do about the reeds between us, so this photo has a somewhat you-are-there quality (meaning that it is technically not very good, but is very real and of the moment):



There are always many, many little blue herons on this river. I rarely photograph them; I don't find them all that interesting in the adult stage. But this one kept fishing even when I was within a few feet of it, so I couldn't resist.



And speaking of little blue herons, I did see this juvenile. Its feathers are in the process of changing from the white color they start out with to the dark adult coloring.



They look striking when they fly and the new color pattern shows up on their wings.



I missed a photo of a green heron because I was too slow to get the camera up and ready. After it flew away, I continued paddling upstream and within minutes saw a tricolored heron. I've gotten a lot of tricolored heron images lately and so I decided to just pass by and enjoy watching it without photographing it. But something didn't look quite right about it--the neck was too short. I kept staring at it as I drifted closer and closer. It's a good thing no other humans were nearby to hear me laughing at myself. I had been sitting there doing nothing as I got closer and closer to another green heron--the bird I had been looking for and had already let get away once. Sheesh.



The entire time I was on the water, I was hearing prothonotary warblers calling. These are such vivid yellow birds, but yet are very difficult to spot in the greens and yellows of the shoreline vegetation (unlike, say, male cardinals). I stopped several times to see if I could find the source of the calls, but after a few minutes it just seemed futile. As I approached the Blue Spring inlet on my way upstream, I could hear two, or maybe even three, warblers in the area near the entrance to the inlet. It's nice and shady there and so I pulled over and got out of the current and just sat for a while trying to find them. Until they found me. Perhaps they felt a kinship with my bright yellow boat... For whatever reason, they flitted around me. These birds are peculiarly and remarkably difficult to photograph (at least I find them so)--the sunlight bounces off of those bright yellow feathers and they end up looking like little balls of glowing yellow light. Out of many images that I captured of them, these two were the only ones I kept:



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It was a great day on the river and no doubt the most comfortable place to be outside.

DH is on vacation this coming week and I don't know if paddling is in the cards or not--I think we have more things planned than we will have time to do. I'll get back out soon, though. Stand by.
- posted by Peggy @ 11:26 AM 7 comments