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Courtesy of the University of North Florida

and  Jack Woodward

I know, it's been a long time between outings. Believe me, I know. I had thought that I had taken Dot out to Bird Island in Nassau Sound via Simpson's Creek out of Talbot Island. But after showing her some past photos of the area, she assured me it wasn't her I had gone out there with. Personally, I've been there over a dozen times probably. One of the really neat things about this run is the rock-like bluff on the way to the island. What appears to be rock is really hard clay. At a distance, one would assume it to be rock. But upon close inspection, it is obviously clay. Nonetheless, a 'rare' sight in this part of Florida. 

One of the 'bad' parts of this outing is the put-in/take-out on Talbot Island. It is not a bona fide boat ramp at all. And at low tide (like it was when we took-out) it is mud . .  swamp mud. It sucked the shoe right off my foot. One must take the good with the bad.

Here are the clay bluffs I was talking about. As a side note, the wind was 'supposed' to be 5-10 mph. It was more like 15-20 mph. And we were headed right into it. And with an out-going tide, there were almost white-caps on the way out to Nassau Sound. The bad with the good. The tide was with us .. but the wind was against us. Regardless, it still felt good to have the wind in our faces. 

As you can see, the bottom part of the bluff is a clay base. The upper part is hard sand. Pretty neat.

Like I said, from a distance, it could easily pass for rock.

This is the stuff I was walking on at Black Rock Beach on Talbot Island when I slipped on the wet clay and REALLY messed up my right shoulder. If you're gonna be dumb . . you better be tough.

This was a pretty neat find. We found this horseshoe crab shell in shallow water off Bird Island. Dot took it home to show her family, saying none of them had ever seen a horseshoe crab. Dot and I had previously seen live ones (almost this big) down at Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine

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The clouds were pretty impressive to look at. At the start of the outing, they were pretty dense across the sky, but as the day wore on, they thinned out a lot.

These are black skimmers. During feeding, they fly low across the water with their lower bill skimming the waters' surface trying to snag some food. Their lower bill is actually longer than their upper bill. An odd feature to be sure. 

These birds are fun to watch. They really seem to 'slice' through the air. 

We saw this osprey with dinner in its' talons.

Dot didn't realize the vast number of crabs there were in the marshes. That and she thought the marsh grass was rooted in water . . not on 'land'. Swamp mud to be sure, but not water. Based on the hundreds if not thousands of crabs we saw just on the banks along the water, there must be literally millions of crabs back in the vast acres of marsh lining the waterway. We watched a gull nonchalantly walking along the bank snatching up crabs. We surmised the males have the really big red pincer.

It was really good to get out on the water again, but by the time we got home we looked like something worse than what the cat drug in. We were both pretty mud spattered. 

Enjoy !!

P.S. 

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Email to Jack Woodward      mailto:  jackwoodward66@hotmail.com

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