Florida Scrub Jays

January 1-15, 2025                                                    Most Recent Posts: 
Oscar Scherer State Park                           Alafia River After the Holidays
site 28                                                         Back at Alafia and On to the Holidays
Osprey, Florida

I marked the New Year by packing up and moving south to the wonderfully named Osprey Florida.  It’s near Venice which does not unfortunately have canals.
My stops on the way at Blue Springs to see the manatee and at Alafia to fly home for the holidays took me across the state from east to west.  So I am now only a few miles from the soon to be Gulf of America they say. 

One of the things I like much better about state parks than private ones is that they usually have wonderful vegetation around the sites.

After the drive, which was less than two hours, and getting set up, I had the energy for some short’ stretch my legs hikes’.  I took a walk around the little Lake Osprey behind the Nature Center.

The Trail is 1/4 of a mile.

Portions of the trail are handicapped accessible.

And then down the South Creek Trail.   I hiked this one many days during my stay.

I arrived on a Wednesday and at 8am Thursday morning the Venice Audubon society sponsors a bird walk in the park.    It was a small group.  We were hoping to see the small family of scrub jays, for which the park is known, that make their home on the green trail adjacent to the campground.  No luck.  But my notes say we did see a red shouldered hawk,  red bellied woodpecker, gray catbird, blue-gray gnatcatcher, cardinal, robin and yellow rumped warbler.

The eagle on the nest would not turn around so the back of its head is what I got.
The light was not good for the other pictures.  They look like silhouettes.

I did get some great pictures of my local cardinal who came one morning to check on me.  He  fluttered around outside the window and peeked in.

On Friday morning there was a ranger hike and I was the only one who showed up for it.  I love the programs they have in the campground here and I’m afraid if they are not better attended, they won’t continue to do them.    Since I was the only participant and there were two rangers, they asked me what I’d like to see and of course I said  the scrub jays.

Can you spot them in this scrub oak?

The Florida Scrub Jay is a true Florida Native found no where else in the world. As you can imagine he is severely endangered due to habitat loss so Oscar Scherer State Park is an oasis in the middle of over development of the scrub habitat the bird requires.

The entire park is sand and the plants which grow in it.  Mostly beautifully white sand.  I’m not sure what the jays are looking for as they peck around in the sandy trail unless it’s insects or previously cached acorns.

Here are the rangers who managed to locate a scrub jay family on the yellow trail for me,  Danny and Glen.   The 3 of us had a fine hike.

They kayak launch from the park into South Creek was damaged by the hurricane and is one of the things that has not yet been repaired.  The park actually only opened two weeks ago.  I was SO lucky my reservations were not cancelled as happened to many with reservations in November and December.

But this meant I was unable to kayak the South Creek and all of my pictures are from the creek side trail which I hiked pretty much every day.

Not sure if this  white bird with green legs is an immature little blue heron or an immature snowy egret.

Along the section of the trail with no creek views.   So very south Florida.

Sure wish I could have tied my boat up at the dock and gone out every morning which is what I have done in years past.   Such a beautiful water way.

As you can see, the creek is not deep.  I suspect the tide is going out.

The green trail which runs right behind the campground has good potential for sunset color.   I wasn’t the only one out on this evening.

Had to put his picture in twice.  Like the Cardinal, he’s just too cute.

And then, the weather turned cool before it later turned cold.  Hot chocolate and a good book was in order.

After that first day of finding the Scrub Jays I went out on my own multiple days and usually was able to peek their curiosity with my poor imitation of chipping sounds or my rhinestone studded ball cap.

On this particular day I was headed to Big Lake (big is a misnomer but bigger than Lake Osprey).

I met up with the jays in the treed area where I had seen them last time and hung out with them as they all came to see what was up.

The trail to Big Lake is all sandy and as I left the jays and walked on toward the lake, they flew up ahead of me and landed in the scrub.  They literally followed me down the trail.  I hope that doesn’t mean some horrid tourists have been feeding them.  HUGE no no.

Each scrub family has a sentinel which is in the highest scrub and watches out for predators.  Prairie dogs and meercats also have sentinels.   I’m not sure if they take turns with this duty.    Perhaps the lower jay is an assistant.

At first it was only one jay following me down the trail and then two, three….
Families are seldom larger than 8 or 10 if that large.   I saw 7 on this day.

These pictures are a combination of those taken on several days when I spent time with the wonderful scrub jays. 

I did finally go too far down the trail to the lake for them and they headed back to their territory.

Big Lake.   Not sure if you can walk all the way around it.  I’ll be back once more this winter so perhaps I’ll check that out.

On Tuesdays the park has a “coffee social” at the Nature Center Screen room.  This too had nearly as many volunteers manning it as visitors attending.    You can tell from what everyone is wearing that the January cold spell has begun.

I met Jackie, on the left, who is traveling with her dog Mister and Gloria who is at the coffee without her husband who is back at their rig.

On Wednesdays and Saturdays, the Nokomis Drum circle meets at the beach to drum down the sun.   David and I always went for the drumming and for the spectacle.   This Wednesday it was too cold and windy for them to hold it on the beach unfortunately so they used the plaza by the parking lot.  Really lacked atmosphere.

The crowds were small, the dancers few.  If I’d known it wasn’t going to be on the beach I may have skipped it.

I can’t really recommend the dancing in this less than usual drum circle but if you’d like to hear the good drumming, use this link.

The drumming and the clouds were the best part of this gathering.

I went out on the beach to see about the sunset which was muted by such wonderful clouds.  But I did find it cold and windy so I don’t blame them for moving it behind the dunes.

The clouds were fantastic.    Take a bigger look with this short video.

Still, in spite of it all, he people, as usual, were interesting.   These are the Bundled up.

The not so bundled up

Bring your favorite parrot.  This is a live bird          Wear your favorite get up.

At the moment the sun goes beneath the horizon the conch musicians blow their shells.  Not sure how they knew when the exact moment was since they could not actually see the sun set but they were hardy just the same.   Have you ever tried this?   I’m wondering how hard it is to make sound with a conch shell.

Color just after sunset.

My last Thursday Audubon hike we also saw the jays but I’ve already shown so many pictures of them I won’t add more.   There were 3 of us on this hike so that’s a bit of an increase in people numbers.   And I must say, this visit to the park was a real increase in times I was able to see the scrub jays.  It was wonderful and unusual.

In addition to the jays, in the distance we saw a gathering in the tree tops of what turned out to be white ibis and a few others. 

Pretty sure you can see the odd man out up there at the top.  More on him in a minute.

I was surprised to see this egret among the group.  

The white bird is an adult ibis and the brown one is a juvenile.  But clearly the long downward curves of the bills are the same.

This is what cold was like in Florida.  39 outside and 48 inside Winnnona.   39 this far south in Florida is VERY unusual.   I only felt OK about it when I saw that the farm had single digits.

On Saturday the park had a tram tour which I joined.

The tour turned out to be mostly to take people who didn’t want to walk around parts of the green trail to see the eagle’s nest.  The side trails that go by the nest tree are blocked off so you have to have binoculars or a camera with a good zoom lens to see it. Lesson learned about the tram ride.   I’ve hiked this trail numerous times and this year the nest is positioned such that it’s really hard to get pictures.

Here are the pictures I took this time.  Pretty much like the earlier one.

I spent two weeks at Oscar Scherer and the highlight was definitely my dates with the Scrub Jays.  The biggest disappointment was not being able to kayak.

The last few days, these folks were among my neighbors and I loved their sign.  It made me smile every time I walked by.  So much better than just the regular name and where you are from.

From here I am lucky to be moving even further south for the up coming seriously cold spell.  Excellent planning though totally serendipitous.