Blue Spring State Park « verdure
Blue Spring State Park
Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

In winter when the sea water cools, manatees swim up rivers to springs that have consistent temperatures. The springs have cooler temperatures than manatees prefer, but generally it’s warm enough to make it through the cold snaps of Florida winters. Blue Spring State Park has a link to a site that posts updates about how many manatees have been spotted recently. A few days after a count in mid January reported of a couple dozen manatees, we visited the park, which is a bit north of Orlando. Mike’s picture:

spring run

Unlike the Ichetucknee, there is very little vegetation in the spring run, so there is nothing for the manatees to eat. There are viewing platforms periodically along the spring run, but the manatees that we saw seemed to prefer hanging out at the far side, as far away from the people as possible, and at the end of the run near where it empties into the St Johns River. During manatee season, the spring run is off limits to swimming, diving and boating. What were much easier to see were the large and numerous alligator gar.

gar

At the head of the springs, “a first magnitude spring that discharges 104 million gallons of water daily” (State Park website), we watched a green anole drink from palmetto fronds. This and the rest are Mike’s pictures, and he did the processing as well.

green anole

Black Vultures were perched on the far side of the run.

black vultures

cormorant

alligator and turtles

There is a nature trail in the south of the park. It has a long exposed stretch that would be without shade until mid or late afternoon. As we were there late morning, we turned around a bit after the ruins of a small house.

gopher tortoise

mushies

cloudless sulphur

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