MAY 7, 2011, SLAS FIELD TRIP REPORT
INDRIO SAVANNAS PRESERVE, FORT PIERCE
Our Last field trip of the year took us to the Indrio Savannas
Preserve off US 1 in northern Fort Pierce. In honor of “Endangered Species
Month“ (which is the month of May), our focus was on spotting the Florida
Scrub Jays that live in this area, and also the Bald Eagle.
We only had a handful of people on this last trip, but we were lucky to have “Dee” join us. Dee is a volunteer at the Savannas State Park in Port St Lucie and she is involved with the Scrub Jay counts and banding projects they do. She shared much information on the Scrub Jay habitats, their calls and their behavior.
We spent one hour in the Preserve, and within our first 10 minutes of walking the trails, we spotted a sentry Scrub Jay in a tree watching us. We were treated to watching it fly and land on the path just a few feet ahead of us . It had an acorn in it’s mouth that it quickly buried in the sandy path. Later, it’s partner also flew in near us and made it’s distinctive “clicking” call. For the majority of our hike, it appeared that these two Scrub Jays were following “us”, rather than vice-versa !
Since our focus was on the Scrub Jay, we kept our visit short to the Preserve. We headed over to the Bald Eagle nest just south of Indrio Road next….and saw one of the two juvenile Bald Eagles at nest and one of the adults.
Submitted by Dorothy Schultz
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***If
you are spotting any Florida Scrub Jays , “Dee” wants to
hear from you so she can verify knew areas for upcoming Scrub Jay
counts….please e-mail her at : tugiebird@bellsouth.net
She’d appreciate any info you can share with her about where you
have been seeing Florida Scrub Jays!