St. Augustine, FL History, Birding and Fossil Shark Tooth Hunting 2/5 - 2/9/25

     Last week I traveled down to St. Augustine, FL.  My daughter had a couple vacation days she needed to use and wanted to go back to her college home town.  I took the trip with her and it was my first time back there since her graduation a few years ago.  St. Augustine is in St. Johns county, just south of Jacksonville, on Florida’s northeast coast.  Founded in 1565, St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied city in the United States.  The Spanish origins of the city are preserved in much of the architecture and cobblestone streets downtown.  Down on Magnolia Street is the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park where Ponce de León supposedly discovered his legendary fountain of youth.  Over on King Street is the beautiful and historical Ponce de Leon Hall, formerly the Hotel Ponce de León, the centerpiece of Flagler College.

Statues of St. Augustine’s most historic figures stand on either side of U. S. 1 at the city’s north entrance.  © S. Weiss 

One is Juan Ponce de León, the first European to find Florida when he landed near St. Augustine in 1513.  The other is Pedro Meléndez de Avilés, the Spanish admiral who founded St. Augustine in 1565.

Entrance to Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth Archeological Park.  © S. Weiss

This entrance is at San Marcos Avenue and Williams Street.  The actual park entrance is off of Magnolia Avenue.

Magnolia Avenue, St. Augustine.  © S. Weiss 

The street is lined with arch shaped old oaks, draped in Spanish moss.  It is considered as one of the most beautiful streets in the country.  The Fountain of Youth Archeological Park is located on the left near the end of this street.

St. Augustine is a beautiful place to visit with too much to see and do in just a few days.  Since I spent many visits there during my daughter’s four year college tenure, I used this as an opportunity for some birding and nature viewing away from our cold and blustery New Jersey.  There are several eBird hotspots in St. Augustine and many across St. Johns County.  With just a few days and only one rental car between us, I focused on a couple of my reliable hotspots in town.  On Thursday I spent a few hours at the St. Johns County Ocean Pier in St. Augustine.  This location also had the potential to spot some North Atlantic right whales.  The whales use the coast of South Carolina to northeast Florida as their calving grounds from November to March.  Though there were frequent spottings of the whales in the area, none were visible from land.  As for the birds, I found many year birds that have not yet made their way north.  There were plenty of black skimmers, Forster’s terns, royal terns and brown pelicans around.  I also spotted some Eurasian collared-doves and sandwich terns, both of which are harder to come by in New Jersey.  My best bird for the day though was a parasitic jaeger flying past the pier.

Eurasian collared-doves.  © S. Weiss

On Friday I did a few walks at local spots around the town:  Fort Mose Historic State Park, Mission Nombre de Dios grounds and Flagler Hospital ponds.  Fort Mose is the site of the first settlement of free Africans in the New World in 1738.  In addition to its historical significance, the site provides good birding habitat.  In the past I have found pileated woodpeckers and great horned owls.  Part of the park was closed this time for some improvement construction, so my highlights again were first of the year birds that have not started north yet.  I added osprey, palm warblers and blue-gray gnatcatchers to the year list.

The Great Cross at Mission Nombre de Dios.  © S. Weiss 

The stainless steel cross commemorates the birth of Christianity in the New World.  It stands 208 feet tall.

The grounds at the Mission Nombre de Dios is the site of the first Thanksgiving recorded in the New World.  This Thanksgiving, between the Spanish settlers and native Timucuans, preceded the more historically famous one between the Pilgrims and Native Americans in Massachusetts.  The site also hosts the Great Cross, the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche and, of course, some good birding opportunities.  My walk here was highlighted by red-shouldered hawk and yellow-throated warbler, both common in Florida but not so much in Ocean County, NJ.

The ponds at Flagler Hospital usually offer some Florida specialties.  Here in the past, I have recorded loggerhead shrike, common gallinule and western cattle egret, but this time only added anhinga and Muscovy duck.  Muscovy duck, like some other species eBird considers escape, exotic or provisional in New Jersey, are considered naturalized in Florida.  Traveling about the area during the day I also came across some common ground doves which are rare up north.

Saturday was our last full day in Florida.  While my daughter spent some time with friends, I drove out to Hastings to bird the Masters Tract Stormwater Treatment Facility.  This multi-habit location offered me my last and most-bang-for-my-buck birding opportunity.  I recorded 41 species on this walk that included blue-winged teal, king rails, common gallinules, limpkins, wood storks, roseate spoonbills and an orange-crowned warbler.  In the past I have recorded as many as 59 species here that included black-bellied whistling duck, American bittern, sora, sandhill crane, American kestrel and Wilson’s snipe among others.  My highlight this time was a rare bird for the East, an ash-throated flycatcher.  I have also seen this species here once previously.  I first thought it to be an Eastern phoebe when it flew up on a perch. I got a brief, but decent look at it and noticed its gray chest and pale belly.  It didn’t vocalize, which would have easily separated it from the very similar looking, and local great-crested flycatcher.  I have seen both species in Florida and NJ and am quite confident in my identification.

Left, roseate spoonbills.  Right, two wood storks and a great egret.  © S. Weiss

Ash-throated flycatcher.  © S. Weiss

I did my birding alone.  One of the activities I did with my daughter was looking for shark teeth on the local beaches.  My daughter started this hobby during her Flagler days and has become very good at it.  She has amassed a collection of several hundred fossil teeth.  These teeth can be several million years old!  During this trip we went twice to nearby Ponte Vedra and Vilano Beach to look for teeth.  Vilano Beach is where she has had most of her success finding shark teeth.  On this trip though we were shutout there.  A couple miles north at Ponte Vedra, we did much better, or at least she did.  I found two teeth one day and none the other day.  My daughter however found about three dozen one day and four the other day.  She certainly has a knack for it, often finding a tooth right in my shadow that I had somehow missed.

Left, my fossil shark.  Right, my daughter’s fossil shark teeth.  © S. Weiss

Shark teeth are the most common fossils to find.  Unlike us mammals that only have one set of adult teeth in a lifetime, sharks are constantly replacing teeth.  They have rows of teeth that continually move up as the frontline ones are lost.  As I have discovered, the average shark can lose around 20,000 (twenty thousand) teeth in a lifetime.  Some species can lose more than double that.  If you take the average 20,000 teeth per shark and times it by the number of sharks that have lived in what is now the North Atlantic Ocean over the past several million years, the potential number of teeth that could be around is just mind blowing.  We’re talking made up numbers like bajillions and gazillions!  Yet they can be frustratingly difficult to find at times.  Many of the teeth are just a few centimeters in size.  They blend in well with the sea shells that are often rolling around as the waves drop them off and pull them back.  I can’t even imagine a fossil from what once was me lasting millions of years.  My daughter and I share this hobby now and will spend more days doing it together.  Hopefully, one day we’ll find an elusive megalodon tooth.