Views From Our Kayak: Lower Wekiva River

Prothonotary Warbler

Hope you like the opening pic. It is a Florida visitor for this time of the year and it was a victory to finally get a pic of this beautiful little bird. We will talk about that later on Did You Know That?

Today we had a very short paddle in the Lower Wekiva River. Finished our things to do around 11:30 and asked wifey if she wanted to go for a paddle. She said yes, as long as it was a short one. Yesterday I wanted to paddle Lower Wekiva River so; Why not today?

Put In \ Take Out: The put in for this trip was Katie's Landing and, as for almost all our trips, the take out too. You can see my previous post about this river for information about how to go to Katie's Landing or click on this link: Katie's Landing.

I was close to tell wifey to forget about it when we arrived at Katie's. The wind was coming from the south and blowing hard. Since we always go down river, north, on this location I was thinking on the trip back. I knew it was going to be hard and did not feel like wanting to battle the wind and the current. We decided to go anyways and to not go too far from Katie's. Sounded like a plan and we were in the water at 12:30.

Ibis

Traffic in the river was not bad. Only two motor boats, one of them with a trio of young men fishing using bows and arpoons. A couple in two solo yaks and a few fishermen near Katie's. That was it. We cut our paddle short after an hour and a half. The wind was a pain in the eye and the pic chances were not frequent. The trip back to Katie's was in my mind and was not enjoying the trip as I should. Regardless we tried to make the most of it and I think we did. Wildlife wise cannot say it was bad at all. Ibis, Red Shouldered Hawks, Herons and many more. Do not have pics of everything we saw but Lower Wekiva Rivers offers a great variety and it is hard to go there and feel dissapointed about it. Our only complaint was the wind and that is something that can happen anywhere. Other than that the wildlife display was as impressive as it always is.

Osprey

Gator

Many gators were in the river today, most of them very squitish. The first four went from wherever they were sunning to the water while we were still 200 feet away. That is not what we are used to in the Lower Wekiva River. At one point we crossed path with a couple in solo kayaks and the gentleman asked us if we saw two gators on our way down. We did not see them and he was telling me about another gator about 300 hundreds yards from where we were. At that moment a gator went back to the water in a hurry at maybe 50 feet from us. Never saw it. Moral of the story: Keep your eyes open, specially when we are so close, or, now in gator mating season.

Lower Wekiva River gator

Prothonotary Warbler

Today's highlight was getting a pic of a Prothonotary Warbler. Took us nearly 20 minutes of going up and down in a section of the river. We saw the little yellow bird in a tree and approached it only to see it flying to another one. That process repeated several times until I decided to wait for them to come to a tree near us because was tired of paddling back and forth. It paid off. Yesssssssssss! Quite an effort but did worth it. Now that we are talking about the Prothonotary Warbler is the perfect time for our new section and here we go.

Did You Know That?

This little fellow has more frequent flyer miles than many of us. Each Spring and Fall it travels from its breeding grounds in the USA to the mangrove swamps in Central and South America. In the mangroves of Panama, for example, they can reach such a high population that sometimes ornithologists have described sights of "swarms" of Prothonotary Warblers. A cool fact about this beautiful yellow bird is the origin of the name. Prothonotary refers to clerks in the Roman Catholic church whose robes were bright yellow. Did you know that? I did not.

At 3:30 we had the yak at the top of our minivan and... very sore arms. Here are more pics of wildlife we saw today...