The St. Andrews Beach Mouse ain’t much of a mouse but it does have its niche in the world. Too bad that small fragile world is shrinking daily - to the point where this beach mouse is almost extinct, certainly extirpated from other locales in the dunes along the Gulf of Mexico. Hey, it has to compete with lots of people wanting big beautiful beach homes. That’s what Florida is all about right?
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February 2018
St. Joseph Peninsula State Park may be its last home. I've done buckets on the park here and here and matching mole has written a series about sea grass in the bay . I didn't actually see the mouse but you can read about it and see photos at FNAI (ok but a decade old), at FL FWC and more details about the recovery plans at US FWS.
From my woods it's a 120 mile trip over to the park thru the backwoods of the Panhandle. There’s some interesting places along the way like Wewahitchka — famous for Tupelo honey and that movie Ulee's Gold.
At the park I met 2 people from FL FWC and biologist MM from the state park service. Our goal was to check on the mouse populations by using these traps. We had ATVs and a UTV to get around since the peninsula is almost 10 miles long and the traps were spread throughout in clusters of 5.
The trap is set-up so mice are attracted to sunflower seed left around the right-angle opening. Then hopefully they climb in, walk over an inkpad, and track across white paper to more seed at the closed end. We note if they eat the seed, carry in other seeds, or leave droppings as well as the condition of the trap and any nearby tracks or holes.
I think we visited about 20 traps and more than half had been used. MM has digital calipers that can measure the tracks and determine the species.
Once a trap is found, it goes quick. One of us pulls off the end cap, MM grabs the white paper and makes notes in his log, I clean the PVC and replace seed, MM re-inks the pad, I reassemble the tube and we are off looking for the next with a GPS to guide us. Here's a trap that got disturbed either by critters or storms. These rusty wires that hold up the tube were also replaced.
We started our survey on the Bay side after riding a long time up the center trail in an UTV to near the tip. The trail is also used by hikers and primitive campers with permits. This Google satellite view shows the upper end of the peninsula. Since it's just across the narrow bay from Port St. Joe, I had cell reception. MM and I did 2 sites with 5 traps each and then 2 more farther down on the Gulf side (arrows). The other crew worked several sites along the Gulf side all the way up to the tip.
Here's a typical 1½ inch beach mouse hole. MM said they have a triangular aspect to them and I’m guessing it's maybe how they dig with the front paws reaching up.
A big surprise as we rode up the trail and walked around the interior was the Monarch butterflies — easily a dozen on our first trek and apparently over-wintering. Here's one that landed as we talked to a hiker curious about what we were doing.
MM was very gracious in stopping each time we saw people - they always had questions. Here he is on the Gulf side showing a track paper and explaining one more time. Shot from atop a frontal dune - the traps are behind me and in front of the taller dunes and spaced out about 300 feet.
And how is the St. Andrews Beach mouse doing? OK here, the population is stable and large enough that it’s being used as a source to reintroduce to other suitable and protected places. There are predators like coyotes but FWC has a trapper to deal with those. Near residential areas, house cats are a big problem. More education and raising a general awareness for the public is helpful. The folks we met at St Joe have traveled there during the winter because they like remote areas and appreciate the wild nature. But as you get into the summer season, eh, not so much. The beach becomes more of a place where stupid people do stupid things as typified by Panama City Beach. St Andrews Bay, for which this beach mouse is named, is in the midst of that insanity. All of this is exacerbated by the desire to build more and bigger houses and condos.
So, no Daily Bucket of mine is complete without wildflower photos. Here's 2 plants common in the dune environment flowering out-of-season.
I also saw a few mushrooms. Guess there is organic matter under all this sand.
And one final photo from the interior looking west to the gulfside dunes. There's Slash Pine, scrubby Sand Live Oak, Beach Rosemary, Wax Myrtle in the low spots and other species I'm not familiar with. A complete plant list for the similar St George Island, as well as other Panhandle locations, can be found here on our Native Plant Society webpage.
And it was a lovely long day. Sunny but it did get cool when clouds appeared. We wanted to explore further, like the historic WW II Army site up the beach a-ways, but rain clouds were threatening. Hope you enjoyed this bucket and see ya in the comments.
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Update later in the day. I received a couple in-depth papers from MM. Other mice being studied are the Choctawhatchee Beach Mouse and Perdido Key Beach Mouse — at places along the Gulf to the Alabama state line and includes federal and private lands. The results for St Joe actually had a 92% average detection rate at 40 traps for the previous 6 months.
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