Finishing January at Silver River

January 24-31, 2026                                                  Most Recent Posts
Silver Spring State Park site 5               FINALLY Paddling on the Silver River
Silver Springs Florida                                 Silver Springs Too Cold To Kayak

On January 25th  the farm in Virginia and Carrie in Maryland got another 8" of snow after snow and sleet the day before.  Here it was 85 degrees.

If you have not seen my previous blog it has most of my pictures from my days kayaking the Silver River.  I tried not to repeat myself too much so these last  two days on the river have fewer pictures.

Sunday January 25th

Every day I was lucky enough to see the manatee and have included them.  They are so wonderful.

Great Blue Heron makes a lovely reflection.

This was the only day I saw the Black Crowned Night Heron.  I was on the Fort King Trail near the head spring for the first time this year.  The trail used to have along the banks the fort and other buildings from a cracker town but they have been removed and it isn’t nearly as much fun to kayak  but the Night Heron made it more than worth doing.

If you’d like to see more pictures taken on the river, use the link on the right at the top of this page to my previous post.

I had gone out in the later afternoon on this day to avoid the crowds renting kayaks at the head spring.   When I got back it was within an hour of sundown.  I was walking the trail back to the campground when ahead of me were some monkeys.  

At first it look like only one or two and then 3 or 4.   I don’t like meeting monkeys on land.  They are wild animals.   Those of you who are long time followers may remember my encounter on the swamp trail a few years ago.

I stopped at a pretty good distance away so this is what my zoom lens could do.

It became clear that not just a few but the whole group was on both sides of me and ahead of me.  I didn’t want to go backwards toward the water so I tried to wait them out thinking they would move on.

But they were apparently quite happy here.  When it was getting close to sundown and more importantly close to the park closing time and they were showing no signs of moving on,  I thought I’d better call the ranger station before they closed so I didn’t get stuck out here in the dark

At first the phone went to voice mail and I thought OK now what.  But when I tried a second time with only 5 minutes to close someone answered and  sent a ranger on an ATV to rescue me.  Of course as soon as the troop heard the engine coming down the trail they disappeared and by the time he rounded the bend I was alone.   I hope he didn’t think I was crazy but as we left, I could see them coming out from the hammock on both sides of the trail behind us.

Monday January 26th

This turned out to be my last day on the river since I was leaving on Thursday  and the temperature dipped to 29 degrees for the next 3 nights, the rest of my stay.  This  meant disconnecting the water 3 nights in a row.   But I’m not complaining given the snow, sleet, ice and temps in the single digits at the farm.

Little Blue Heron giving me a look.

Doesn’t he look like he’s all tail?

Hope you think there are never too many manatee pictures.   I am so lucky and thrilled every time I see them.

Then when I got down to the ramp, there was the same or another troop of monkeys being ogled by folks in their boats at the dock’s edge.

I was actually glad for all the people for once since I was able to get my boat out of the water without any monkey business.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the temperatures of course were chillier so I did some trail hiking but I’ve posted those trails already in the post you can access from the second link at the right top of this page.

I also did some reading in both of my current books, one fiction and one non-fiction.

And did grocery store runs to Aldi’s and Publix.  

This was the temperature on Thursday morning ( IN FLORIDA) so I drug my feet packing up to leave.   But I had to be out by 1:00.  The  167 mile trip south to Oscar Scherer took me 3 1/2  hours including a stop for gas and the terrible traffic on I-75.

By the time I got there and set up it was nearing sundown and I was exhausted.

You can see an orange glow through the trees behind Winnona.

The moon was bright in the sky.

January closed itself out by raining all day so Pooh and I did some reading.

The next morning I was awakened by pecking on my bedroom windows.  It seems a mockingbird has seen his rival and is doing his best to scare him off.

Of course I’m not crazy about this as he can do some damage to the seals around the windows.   So I conferred with Pooh and his friend the Barn Owl who volunteered to try to be scary.

 

Pooh took the window at the head of my bed.

Owl took the one on the other side.

As I’m sure you know, they weren’t at all scary and the pecking continued.

I tried multiple times to get a video of him as he would start at dawn and wake me up if I wasn’t awake but as soon as I got my camera he would stretch out the times between his attacks.  

This video is the best I could get and the attacks are at the very beginning so be alert or let it run twice since it’s very short.  So aggravating that I gave up on him after he didn’t seem to be coming back and the second I turned the video off, there he was. Here’s the link to the stupid bird who kept this up for the entire two weeks I was at Oscar Scherer.

Or at least he was still at it when I returned from my trip to meet Carrie and Celia at Disneyworld.  That’s my next post.