Florida 4-2-25

Well, certainly not our best day for butterflies. We decided to go to Sebastian Inlet to look for Mangrove Skippers and Mangrove Buckeyes. While we saw both, I only managed photos of the Buckeye. Mangrove Skippers are apparently quite fast and skittish.

It was hot and sunny. Mid 80’s and full sun all day. The kind of day when sunscreen just melts off of you and you end up with some amount of sunburn.

We started the day at the Sebastian Inlet campground area just to quickly look around the parking area. Not much going on there other then the obvious overabundance of Great Southern Whites. So we moved on back down A1A to the Sebastian Inlet Marina where there are bike and walking trails.

There wasn’t much here except 2 possible Mangrove Skippers flying and never landing, but they could have been anything really. Lots of Great Southern Whites again. There was a HUGE Southern Live Oak tree that we stopped to take a photo at.

We then took a quick trip to the Sebastian Inlet State Park which is directly across the water from the campground. It is a beach area which is pretty nice. Hoped to see some butterflies there, but there was very little going on. Just a tortoise and a cool lizard.

We decided to go back to the campground area where we knew Mangrove Skipper is found and walked the bike trail. There were some nice birds at the fishing pier at least. Wood Storks seem to love it there, along with Egrets, Pelicans, etc.

As far as the bile trail…big mistake (sort of). The trail goes for MILES and it is wide open (basically a dirt road) and is HOT. We saw two confirmed Mangrove Skippers which just hopped up and took off before we could think of lifting a camera. On the way back, hot, tired and just a bit moody, a Buckeye flew up towards us. I was able to follow it back and forth up and down the trail for a bit and get a few shots of it. Mangrove Buckeye (West Indian Mangrove Buckeye) which was one we had both never seen before. That was about the most positive part of the day. Well, we did stop for ice cream on the way back to the hotel. 🙂

Back at the hotel, I took a look around the flowers on the grounds and found a nice White Peacock. Not much else though.

Tomorrow we head to the western part of the state again and will more than likely have a bit of a down relaxing day once we get there. We’ll see. We always say that…