Bicycling St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge

St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, in Wakulla County, Florida, is one of the oldest wildlife refuges in the United States. Established in 1931 as a wintering ground for migratory birds, it encompasses more than 83,000 acres south of Tallahassee, Florida and includes about 43 miles of north Florida’s Gulf coast. Congress has designated 17,350 acres of the Refuge a National Wilderness Area. The Refuge includes several Gulf of Mexico coastal habitats, such as saltwater marshes, islands, tidal creeks, and the estuaries of seven north Florida rivers. It is home to a diverse range of plant and animal life and also has a long history of human use, including structures such as the St. Marks Lighthouse, the second oldest lighthouse in Florida. 

This was our last day in the Sopchoppy area, so we decided to bicycle the Refuge, which has a paved road stretching 7 miles from its beautiful Visitor Center to St. Marks Lighthouse, and many more miles of unpaved roads and paths available for the more adventurous.

We parked at the Visitor Center and mounted up for the adventure:

The Refuge has a park-wide speed limit of 35mph, which we think is too fast.  All the same, we nearly broke the limit.

There was abundant wildlife, including several alligators we spotted just from the road.  When this fellow spotted us approaching, he made his way deliberately down to the safety of water:

The Refuge is rich mixture of hammock, pools, estuaries, streams, bogs, marshes and swamps.  One interesting key to understanding its ecology is to pay attention to whether a body of water is salt, fresh or brackish (tidal).  The combination makes for abundantly pretty scenery:

Not too far into our ride, we ran across a gate with a sign indicating that it sits on the Florida Trail, which our friend Dick Mallery has been hiking.  You can find videos of his experiences on his YouTube channel.   We paid attention to the path of the trail through the Refuge.  At this junction, it moves West and North beyond Kathy in the photo below.  It heads North up the Lighthouse Road which we had been bicycling, before turning East and South out of the Refuge.

Soon after leaving the Florida Trail, we spotted this anhinga perched on a dead stump in a waterway, alternating between searching for food and drying its wings:

The Refuge hosts many types of shorebirds, including this Great Blue Heron:

Other waterfowl are also abundant, including this covert of coots, who seemed to be getting great pleasure out of sharing the latest gossip.  They didn't look particularly covert to us, however:

Pied-billed ducks share the waters with the coots.  We often saw a female among a group of coots, with no male obviously present.  We didn't know whether female pied-billed ducks feel safe among coots, who do not bother them, or whether they can pair up with a male coot.  After a while, we actually found what appeared to be a mated pair of pied-billed ducks:

There were, of course, many Great White Egrets and other types of herons:

Here's the second alligator we saw -- even larger than the first:

After 7 miles of pedaling and wildlife peeping, we made it to St. Marks Lighthouse.

In the 1820s, the town of St. Marks, Florida (originally known as San Marcos de Apalache) was considered an important port of entry for the prosperous planting region of middle Florida and some counties of South Georgia. Once the agricultural products reached the new port town, they were loaded aboard boats for shipment to New Orleans and St. Augustine.  There were, however, problems in navigating both the Apalachee Bay and the St. Marks River.  In many places both bay and river were shallow, and it was not too uncommon for boats to run aground and/or get mired in the muddy shallows.

The first lighthouse for this area was constructed of brick, but proved to have hollow walls, whereas the party commissioning it had insisted on solid walls.  So it was reconstructed and accepted in 1831.  It's position quickly proved inadequate and a new tower was constructed, which survived the destructive hurricanes of the 1840s and 1850s, including the disastrous hurricane of September 1843, which destroyed most of the town of Port Leon and caused major damage to the town of St. Marks. The tower was damaged in the Civil War, but was reconstructed and given a new lens.  In 1916 a cistern, kitchen, outhouse, picket fence, boathouse and dock, and a maintenance building were added. In 1931, St. Marks Migratory Bird Refuge was created, as was the road leading to the lighthouse. The Light was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.  It has been decommissioned as is not an active light.

Leaving the Lighthouse, we set out by bike on the Lighthouse Levee Trail, which leads around a small bayou over to the Lighthouse Boat Ramp.  This route took us by the remnants of the dock that had been constructed for the Light:

As we approached a point of land near the Light that juts out into the Gulf, we spotted a Great Blue Heron waltzing down the same road. Unlike most other Great Blue Herons we have encountered, this one was not as wary or put out by us, and actually let us get close enough for a photo, even though s/he was aware of us:

Pedaling our way back up Lighthouse Road, we turned off onto a packed sandy trail and spotted the Refuge Observational Tower, an old fire tower that exists near Headquarters Pond, where the original Refuge headquarters had been.  The fire tower was one of two originally built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as part of their work on the Refuge between 1934 and 1942.

Headquarters Pond is one of the main attractions in the Refuge.  It boasts an observation deck from which the entire pond can be viewed. 

When we were there, Kathy spotted a flock of herons and spoonbill. David tried to get a photo of a spoonbill and trained all his magnifying power on the flock of nesting birds, but could not clearly show the spoonbill.  We even (as it turns out) may have unwittingly violated a nesting closure and tried to pedal around to the back of the pond to get a closer look at the spoonbills; but the path did not come close enough to the pond where the birds were gathered.  So all we can do is report to you that there is a roseated spoonbill somewhere in that crowd on the far side of the pond:

On our trip back to the Visitor Center, we spent a little more time watching the coots playing around in the water.  We spotted what we thought were two pied-billed ducks among them, but, as it turned out, they appeared to be a mated pair of green-winged teals.  They looked very happy with each other:

We also spotted our old friend the anhinga drying out her wings in the same spot we saw her before.  We thought that, since she gave us two such impressive performances, we should give her extra billing in this blog entry:

What would probably be an hour-and-half bike ride expanded into a 4 hour visit, what with wildlife viewing, exploring side trails, watching coots, gazing at a firetower, eating a picnic lunch, and similar inspired activity.  It proved to be a wonderfully pleasant day -- even with the strong winds that blew in our face the whole 7 miles back up Lighthouse Road!  (But who's whining?)