Phoebe's lifer West Indian manatee at Blue Springs State Park.
Sure enough, as soon as we parked the car and walked down to the edge of spring-fed Blue Springs Run where it meets the St. John's River, Phoebe added West Indian manatee to her mammal life list.The park is a designated manatee refuge and the park's name (Blue Springs) is the reason the manatees are here in the winter. Warm water from the springs heats the river and manatees need warm water to survive. The very cold weather of early January had been hard on the manatees in this part of Florida.
We walked the boardwalk for the next two hours, looking at manatees, spotting birds, marveling at live oaks draped in Spanish moss, and drinking in the warm Florida sunshine.
That morning when we left Ohio, it was snowing hard with three inches of snow on the ground, temperatures dropping. So, though Floridians on the boardwalk were bundled up and decrying the cold snap, 68ºF felt like beach weather to us.
Me: "We're not in Ohio anymore, Phoebster!"Phoebe: "Yeah and if we were, I'd be in algebra class right now!"
The happy manatee spotter, Phoebe Linnea.Many of our birding pals at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival made the pilgrimage to Blue Springs to see the manatees. We had a total of more than 20 manatees during our visit. It was as satisfying as it was awesome.
