DuPuis Revisited

We went back to DuPuis Equestrian Campground, Friday March 10, after five days at Wekiwa Springs.  Such is life when you try to register very late in the season complicated by school vacation/college break time down here.  We were told we had FCFS status, but there were no campsites available so back down to DuPuis we came as all we needed was a new permit.

We arrived to find the non equestrian campground nearly empty in comparison to what it had been when we left.  Our Canadian friend, Marc, was back as well, so we pulled our campers right back under the very same trees we had been under before.  The difference was that this time there were lots of horses here whereas before we had only a few.  (Asked a lady Saturday am and she told us that there were 12-14 horses from "their" barn down for a weekend of riding.)

Our first question to Marc was, is the owlet still here?  His response was "yes", but he is now living in another tree across the campground road.  We looked up and sure enough there he was.  As we were sitting having our social time, a red-shouldered hawk came screeching through above the tops of the trees and landed in the very top of a nearby pine.  Marc filled us in on what was going on.  It appears that mom and dad great horned owl stole the hawks' nest and took it over.  There was quite a battle over the nest and the owls being much bigger won the battle.  The hawks have neither forgotten nor forgiven the owls for this and on occasion come in on the attack.  The young owlet however, is larger than the hawk so it may be more show than anything else.

In the collage below, the top photo was taken just six days before the photo from Friday afternoon.  Quite a bit of the fluffy baby feathers are gone from the chest and the face just looks older.  There were longer tail feathers and it appeared that his wing feathers were also longer.  We'll have four more days here to watch him/her grow and maybe fledge while we are around to see it.

 

The owlet fledged last night!  He or she is gone today.

The DuPuis campground is next to a highway (Florida 76) that large trucks use to take sugar cane from the fields to the refinery.  Also, many of the old cane fields are now sod farms, so we see (and hear) many trucks carrying huge rolls of sods.  For the most part, the weekend was more quiet, but the truck noise goes late into the night and starts long before daybreak.

There are two large cemeteries near the campground.  We have now ridden down to explore one of  them.  In the cemetery there is a mass grave containing about 1600 bodies of individuals who died in this area as a result of the hurricane of 16 September 1928; another 700+ are buried near Palm Beach.  This was a storm that came in off the Atlantic hitting the areas near Jupiter Lighthouse and then came across the state.  The levee on Lake Okeechobee's south side failed and this is where the deaths primarily occurred.  There were potentially 3000 individuals who perished many whose bodies were never found.  If you go on to the Internet you can find all sorts of information about this massive storm.

Sunday we decided to go to the rodeo in Okeechobee - the Okeechobee Cowtown Rodeo.  It was the first rodeo for us and so quite interesting.  Marty didn't take her big camera with a proper lens for shooting any distance so the small camera had to do it all.  The photos capture the spirit of the event from bull riding to the rodeo clown and bronco busting.  There was even a children's event of mutton busting that had us all laughing at the little kids trying to ride the sheep.  The bigger kids knew you had to wrap your arms and legs around and hang on tight!  As for the adults riding bulls and broncos, they were pretty impressive as these critters would buck up into the air and change direction at the same time.  Pretty impressive.

 

 

 

We have now paddled on the St. Lucile canal which runs from Lake Okeechobee to the Atlantic Ocean.  We accessed the canal from Indiantown which is just east of the campground by about five or six miles.  It is a small community with both Native Americans and a sizeable Hispanic population.  There are several really nice parks and in the park from which we launched our kayaks we saw Sand Hill Cranes just walking in the grass very much oblivious to our presence.  We also spotted another Limpkin which was pretty neat as prior to this sighting it was only Marty's.

 

We have done more biking in the park and found that even the car roads sometimes have more loose sand than we like to peddle in so on Tuesday when we went for a ride we did end up coming back via the highway.  We have seen lots of birds in the park, grackles a plenty but also got a rare treat on Tuesday afternoon when we walked over to a small pond and managed to see four red-headed woodpeckers.  Didn't get a good shot, but will share one with you any way because they are just such beautiful birds.  These are not birds we see in Maine, however, Marty grew up in Michigan where they are often seen in the summer time.

 

We were surprised to see a Kingfisher come into the pond as well.  We had seen these from a distance when paddling but never just resting in a treetop.

 

And there was a red-shouldered hawk hanging out for a short time as well.  We think that once he became aware of us he just wanted to head out.  It was pretty windy so the hawk was using it's wings to keep itself balanced.

 

Wednesday we head north to Ocala National Forest and Juniper Springs Campground.  From there we'll head toward Charleston, SC and then to the Outer Banks via a ferry and then work our way to VA and then up to Maine where they are dealing with yet another winter storm.