Random Thoughts: Last entry for St Andrews State Park

Friday afternoon. It is decision time, do we go for one last paddle and walk the beach again or just paddle. We think it will be paddle and walk. this has been a great park. This afternoon Dee and Marty scoped out all the sites with direct or nearly direct access to the water. Have to plan ahead for next year. We can make reservations 11 months in advance so we could go ahead and make a reservation in March for 2018. That would be awesome as we would then, we assume, get just what we wanted for a site.

One thing we had not mentioned (maybe we did) was that there are two areas where one can see lots of wildlife both are part of the Buttonwood Marsh. One is the overlook and the other just across the road. The overlook has a viewing platform from which one can see nesting Great Blue Herons and Egrets. The egrets are busy building nests right now and the males have quite a bit of extra length in their plumage (we think). As we watched the other day several males were flying from one side of the marsh to the side we were on and looking for perfect sticks to take back to their mates. In the photo below you can see the size of the stick this one will take back to his mate! They were very, very busy flying back and forth across the marsh with sticks or coming to look for them. Pretty interesting to watch to be sure.

At the same time there were deer on both sides of the street that divides the marsh. One doe walked very near us on the viewing platform and across the road (above) this lone deer was grazing. The next day we saw three grazing there and on the road back to the campground three very young deer; but old enough to not have spots.

Below is the same bird as above as he walks casually toward an area where he discovered lots of sticks with potential.

These are such elegant birds. Hard not to be totally fascinated by them.

This Great Blue was somewhat the "king" of the marsh path. He encountered the egret above plus another one and verbally told them where to go without ruffling any of his feathers. Just is posture tells you "he is the boss." It was been great to observe these large birds up close. And at our campsite we have seen all the smaller ones and have been (probably illegally) feeding them seed. There has been at least one bunny in our backyard along with some large mice who are living in the palmettos.

Marty got over to the pier one last time hoping for a nice timed exposure, but didn't get what she wanted-still a nice shot though.