Flashback 3 St. Johns County, FL
When my younger daughter was attending college in St. Augustine, FL, I got to visit her often. I spent many days out birding the area while she was on campus. St. Augustine is on the northeast coast of Florida, roughly a 50-minute drive south from Jacksonville. It is the county seat of St. Johns County and the oldest city in the United States. It is one of my favorite places to visit. There are many birding hotspots nearby and the ones I frequented most often were Anastasia State Park, Masters Tract Stormwater Treatment area on Hub Bailey Road and Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTM NERR). Today I look back at one day walking through part of the large GTM NERR expanse. GTM is located in beautiful Ponte Vedra Beach, about a 40-minute drive from St. Augustine. GTM covers over 76,000 acres and lists over 350 bird species, dozens of reptiles and amphibians and over 500 plant species. It was at G...