Florida, 2008
Here I have included the brief summaries I wrote up each night on our trip. Not included here is all the help we received from other birders on suggestions of places to check on the trip, thanks! I will have a photo gallery up in the next day or so, so check back again for that soon.
We saw 125 species in total, one of which was a lifer and three other North American birds! A checklist is at the end of this page.
April 7th
We flew into Miami this
afternoon, only to be greeted with traffic jams all the way to the main
highway through the keys. We didn't have to much time to stop, but we
made a few brief detours on our way to Key West.
Our first stop
was at Islamorada, where we birded the woods near the Green Turtle
Inn. We had a few migrants kicking around but not much and one Western Kingbird was probably the most uncommon bird. Warblers included Black-throated Blue, Black-and-white, and Palm Warblers and a single Ovenbird.
Other brief stops at Ohio Key and Lake Edna proved fairly uneventful bird wise. Black-necked Stilts, a Merlin or two, and just about all the herons were the main highlights. I was also surprised at the number of Common Mynas kicking around the island...why hasn't this been added to the list yet!
None bird wise...we did see a Key Deer on Big Pine Key briefly as we drove by.
April 8th
Today we got up early to take the
boat to the Dry Tortugas. Our day was started off with the obvious
good omen of a Rock Pigeon taking a poo on my head...guess it happens
to everyone once.
Our boat ride out was filled with several decent birds, including a couple flocks of Northern Gannets, an Audubon's Shearwater, and a single Brown Booby as we neared the Tortugas. The cloud of Sooty Terns and Brown Noodies
greeted us from nearby Hospital Key as we neared the Fort, but we
choose to bird the trees inside the fort before taking on the tern
flocks. News of a Loggerhead Kingbird a couple weeks ago made my heart
race when the first passerine I saw was a kingbird, but unfortunately
(but not disappointingly!) it was a Gray Kingbird.
I could hear several warbler chips and we managed to build a decent day
list of warblers simply by wandering the trees and bushes in and around
the fort. Besides the neoptropicals listed below, we also had a Sora running around the bushes, a kestrel chasing the warblers around, and a Green Heron drinking out of a puddle. Also a single Yellow-crowned Night-heron was seen hiding in the trees near the pillars.
White-eyed Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Black-whiskered Vireo
Norther Parula
Black-and-white Warbler
Prairie Warbler
Palm Warbler
American Redstart
Prothonotary Warbler
Worm-eating Warbler
Ovenbird
Common Yellowthroat
Hooded Warbler
Summer Tanager
Indigo Bunting
For
the second half of the day I watched the tern colony, searching for the
rare Black Noddy. After a long time of carefully checking all the
noddies I could find (which was, literally, thousands) I came up
empty. Other birds on the beaches besides the expected included Lesser Yellowlegs, Sandwhich Tern (expected I guess but a bird I haven't seen for awhile), Spotted Sandpiper, and what appeared to be a female Green-winged Teal.
Nothing new on the way back in, but we did have another close look at a Audubon's Shearwater which was a nice surprise.
April 9th
Started out this morning at Fort
Zachary in Key West, a popular local migrant trap on the island.
Although the migrants were not nearly as plentiful as the day before,
we kicked up a number of the usual warblers, vireos, and a Summer Tanager or two. Perhaps the most exciting bird here was a dark morph Short-tailed Hawk that flew low over the parking lot as we headed out.
Local
birder Carl Goodrich showed us around a couple good local areas,
including Indigenous Park where we found a few more migrants. Worm-eating and Black-throated Green Warblers were the only new warblers for the day, but we also had a Wood Thrush and a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker here. Working on a tip from Carl we checked out the dump on Stock Island where we found about a dozen Lesser Black-backed Gulls.
We
spent the rest of the day working up the keys and checking out
shorebird habitat and other good spots along the keys. A stop along
Sugarloaf Key provided us with a Reddish Egret in
one of the marshes, but very little else. At the famous Sugarloaf
cuckoo spot we did have one cuckoo briefly fly across the path...only
to immediately disappear into the mangroves...sure didn't look like
there was rufous on its wings, but it was far to brief to tell.
We
made a few other stops along the keys and spent a considerable amount
of time wandering around the Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge on Big
Pine Key. Despite the time spent here, we had few birds of note (Yellow-billed Cuckoo
probably the most interesting migrant). We did have several encounters
with the endemic white-tailed deer race called the Key Deer.
At the Wild Bird Center in Key Largo we found a couple Wood Storks and a Roseate Spoonbill, both new for our trip.
April 10th
This morning we planned to stop by
the Lucky Hammock to search for the reported La Sagra's Flycatcher,
however it took us about an hour longer to find it then we thought! We
did find the spot eventually and was able to find a few decent
migrants/breeders. A Yellow-breasted Chat showed well in the hammock in the early hours of the morning, but we also had nice looks at female Painted Buntings and a Barred Owl here and at the Annex.
Afterwards,
we headed into the everglades for the rest of the day. For the most
part the birding was slow, but along research road we found our first
group of Swallow-tailed Kites for the day. Anhinga trail provided Carolina and Marsh Wrens, but none of the expected Anhingas. We did eventually find Anhingas at one of the small ponds off the road, as well as some Roseate Spoonbills, Wood Storks, and other common wading birds of the everglades. A couple Forester's Terns were flying around Nine Mile Pond as well as a sizable flock of American White Pelicans and a lone Glossy Ibis. At Flamingo there were a few Black Skimmers around and at Eco Pond there was a good sized flock of Stilt Sandpipers.
Perhaps best of all at the everglades was the adult male Snail Kite at
the Pay-Hay-Okee (spelling?) overlook thanks to a tip from a couple of
California Birders who had seen the bird earlier in the morning. We
ended the trip searching unsuccessfully for nuthatches in the pines
(but did have Pine Warbler and Eastern Bluebird as compensation) and gave one last shot at Lucky Hammock for the flycatcher.
Checklist
Birds seen on this trip, lifer in bold/italic, ABA birds in bold.
Blue-winged Teal
Green-winged Teal
Audubon's Shearwater
Masked Booby
Brown Booby
Northern Gannet
American White Pelican
Brown Pelican
Double-crested Cormorant
Anhinga
Magnificent Frigatebird
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Little Blue Heron
Tricolored Heron
Reddish Egret
Cattle Egret
Green Heron
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron
White Ibis
Glossy Ibis
Roseate Spoonbill
Wood Stork
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
Swallow-tailed Kite
Snail Kite
Bald Eagle
Northern Harrier
Red-shouldered Hawk
Short-tailed Hawk
American Kestrel
Merlin
Sora
Common Moorhen
American Coot
Sandhill Crane
Black-bellied Plover
Semipalmated Plover
Killdeer
Black-necked Stilt
Greater Yellowlegs
Lesser Yellowlegs
Willet
Spotted Sandpiper
Ruddy Turnstone
Sanderling
Least Sandpiper
Stilt Sandpiper
Short-billed Dowitcher
Long-billed Dowitcher (?)
Laughing Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Royal Tern
Sandwich Tern
Forster's Tern
Least Tern
Sooty Tern
Brown Noddy
Black Skimmer
Rock Pigeon
White-crowned Pigeon
Eurasian Collared-Dove
White-winged Dove
Mourning Dove
Common Ground-Dove
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Barred Owl
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Belted Kingfisher
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Downy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Great Crested Flycatcher
Western Kingbird
Eastern Kingbird
Gray Kingbird
Loggerhead Shrike
White-eyed Vireo
Yellow-throated Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
Purple martin
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Bank Swallow
Barn Swallow
Carolina Wren
Marsh Wren
Eastern Bluebird
Wood Thrush
Gray Catbird
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Northern Parula
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Pine Warbler
Prairie Warbler
Palm Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Prothonotary Warbler
Worm-eating Warbler
Ovenbird
Common Yellowthroat
Hooded Warbler
Summer Tanager
Eastern Towhee
Northern Cardinal
Blue Grosbeak
Indigo Bunting
Painted Bunting
Red-winged Blackbird
Eastern Meadowlark
Common Grackle
Boat-tailed Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird
House Sparrow
Common Myna