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| Pelicans on nests |
We’ve seen (and photographed) pelicans sitting on pilings,
bridges and trees. We have never seen
them sitting on nests until we happened upon them during a gloriously sunny and
calm kayak on our last morning at Ho Hum RV Park. The forecast had looked promising for a paddle
the night before, so we asked the campground manager if we could be a bit late
in vacating our spot the next morning.
She had very generously agreed.
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| Heading out to Lanark Reef (that green strip on the horizon) |
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| A calm day |
Lanark Reef is a strip of green with a daymark sign that we
saw on the horizon from our campsite at Ho Hum.
It looked close enough to be a good kayaking destination on a windless
day, if we would ever get a windless day. So, on
moving day the winds were calm and instead of packing up to move, we threw our kayaks in the water and
paddled out ¾ mile to the daymark.
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| Critical Wildlife Area... |
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| Great Egrets in small shrubs |
As we approached, sea gulls and terns started screaming and
flying up and around us. So many loud
and unhappy birds. The line of daymarks read “Closed to Public
Access”. Oh, we thought, this has
been protected as a sea bird sanctuary...how lovely. We paddled along the shore, outside of
the daymarks. The din didn’t cease. We passed a clump of low palmetto plants with
Great Egrets standing on them. Then we
came to a ridge with silhouettes of lumps moving their heads, wings, and huge
bills. Pelicans! Pelicans sitting on nests on the ground!
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| More pelicans on nests |
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| Still more pelicans on nests |
It wasn’t until this point that we realized that this narrow
spit of sand was being protected as a rookery.
That was the reason the gulls were screaming at us. That was why there were so many egrets standing
on the (short) tallest plants on the island.
That was why there were hundreds of pelicans all jumbled together in one
place. What a special happenstance for
us!
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| Egrets |
We paused quietly and soaked in the moment. Gradually, the seagulls gave up and the noise
level returned to the constant chortle of a rookery.
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| So many pelicans on nests |
In an earlier blog post, we mentioned the many pelicans that we
saw diving into the water to fish in front of our campsite. Ahhhh, the rookery is why we had such an abundance of pelicans.
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| Returning home |
You’ll be happy to know that we returned to the campground,
finished packing and got out of our campsite just an hour late, and before the next folks arrived to
move in. Phew! We moved a whopping 5 miles down the road to
Carrabelle Beach RV Resort across from a glorious white sand beach - but more about that later.
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| Happy kayakers on a windy day - Dana's chin strap is keeping her hat from blowing off |
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| A pelican fly by |
We had made two paddles earlier on windy days with rough
seas. We mentioned the first one in a previous
post. Here are photos of the second paddle. It had been calm when we started out, but the
wind kicked up as we were paddling. St.
George Sound is a protected body of water with barrier islands bearing the
brunt of the wave motion in the Gulf of Mexico.
However, wind is wind and it can make for tough paddling.
St. Vincent Island National Wildlife Refuge
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| At Indian Pass boat ramp |
We returned to the Forgotten Coast this Spring with a list
of adventures that we hadn’t quite gotten to the year before. One of those adventures was to go out to St.
Vincent Island, one of the four barrier islands that protect this section of
coastline. Preserved as a wildlife sanctuary,
you can only reach the island by boat. We
could take the St. Vincent Island shuttle across the ¼ mile Indian Pass or … we
could paddle out in our kayaks. The
forecast was for calm winds, so we put our kayaks on the roof of our little car
and headed to Indian Pass about an hour away.
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| Looking across at St. Vincent Island |
We knew there would be a strong current with the outgoing
tide. But, the calm winds we anticipated
were, in fact, a bit stronger than forecast and coming from the beach where we
wanted to land. There was a “Yellow” beach
flag (meaning rough but not life-threatening conditions) flying at the boat
ramp when we arrived.
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| St. Vincent Island shoreline |
It was a strenuous “¼ mile” paddle heading into the wind and waves, going beyond our destination, to then drift back to our landing spot.
The island was very quiet and peaceful. We walked down one of the roads in the interior
of the island. There was evidence of trees
that had died and been sawed down, perhaps in the aftermath of Hurricane
Michael that devastated this region in 2018.
There were also charred tree trunks from prescribed controlled
burns. We saw a little blue heron and a
woodpecker (too far away to identify).
We ate our picnic lunch perched on the sterns of our kayaks, and headed back across Indian Pass. This time, the crossing was easy. We were carried by the current with the wind pushing us from behind. On the way home, we stopped at the Indian Pass Raw Bar for a plate of oysters for Russ and BBQ sandwich for Dana. It was a two lunches kind of day!
Here is a movie of the pelican rookery. This is what we first saw. Those silhouetted “lumps” are pelican heads, bills and wings. Zoom in (if you can) to see them move. Note the rookery noise in the background.
Here is a movie of narrow, low and noisy Lanark Reef.
Here is a movie of our abundance of pelicans - taken from our campsite.
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