South Florida Winter Weekend Jan 08—12, 2009
Posted by Brennan Mulrooney
Brennan Mulrooney
Brennan Mulrooney was born and raised in San Diego, California. Growing up, his heart and mind were captured by the ocean. He split his summer days between helping out behi...Related Trips
South Florida is well-known in the birding world for having several species, both native and introduced, found nowhere else in the ABA area. Our winter tour was designed to provide an escape from the winter weather being experienced in other parts of the country, while seeing many of these special species and visiting some of the destinations for which South Florida is rightly famous. This year's tour was a great success on all counts.
We had great weather; in fact it was almost too warm! (I did say "almost.") We enjoyed temperatures in the upper 70s and abundant sunshine, just like I ordered. With brutally cold temperatures throughout so much of the country, we felt pretty fortunate to be in sunny South Florida.
We started our tour with visits to two "sewage ponds" in Palm Beach County. Of course, calling Wakodahatchee and Green Cay Wetlands "sewage ponds" is like calling Mt. Rushmore a hill with some faces on it. These places are the Rolls Royces of water treatment facilities. Each has an excellent boardwalk that takes you out into a gorgeous wetland where normally secretive marsh birds can be found right at your feet! We had many great views of things like Tricolored and Little Blue herons, Great Blue Herons and Anhingas on nests, and Blue-winged Teal and Mottled Ducks paddling around at close range, but the highlights were the superb views of Purple Gallinule and a breathtaking experience with a Sora only 10 feet away in perfect light. At Green Cay we saw many of the same species, with the notable addition of Limpkin. This Florida specialty has become quite reliable at this spot in the last few years and we were successful here once again.
On our way south to Florida City, we took a side trip out the Tamiami Trail where we found the defining bird of the Everglades system, the Snail Kite. We had great views of several birds foraging over the sawgrass marshes, occasionally dropping down on an unsuspecting snail and carrying it back to a perch. We were then able to watch as they used their specialized bills to quickly extract their juicy prize. This was a fitting way to cap a fantastic first day of our trip.
Our next two days were spent exploring Everglades National Park and a few select areas of South Dade County (the dump!). We continued our streak of fantastic views of gorgeous birds with a knock-out performance by a Roseate Spoonbill glowing in the afternoon light at Mrazek Pond and a very close, confiding American Bittern at Anhinga Trail. Burrowing Owls put on a good show for us at the airport while singing Eastern Meadowlarks did their best to draw our attention away. An adult male Scissor-tailed Flycatcher was quite a sight as it sat on a wire with those improbably long tail feathers hanging down. Short-tailed Hawk is always a priority on this tour and, finally, we spotted one that was soaring with the vultures, right where it was supposed to be. A Canada Goose was a new species for the cumulative tour list. South Florida is one of the few places in North America where this species makes the Rare Bird Alert.
The last morning of our tour was spent searching the more urbanized areas of South Florida for some of the many exotic species that now call it home. Our main targets were those species deemed countable by the ABA, and we did quite well, finding them all in record time. First up were Red-whiskered Bulbuls, which distracted us from our great scope views of White-crowned Pigeons (a native in exotic habitat) that have adapted to this neighborhood. We found a pair of Monk Parakeets tending to their huge, bulky stick nest, then we changed locations and quickly found a small flock of White-winged Parakeets. A bit of searching in a neighborhood near the Miami Airport turned up many more Monk Parakeets and a very cooperative pair of Spot-breasted Orioles.
We had bagged all our targets for the morning with plenty of time to spare, so we headed off to Fort Lauderdale to see if we could relocate the Smooth-billed Ani flock that lives near the airport. I hadn't found them during scouting and there were no recent positive reports, but the way our morning was going, why not give it a shot? Well, the gamble paid off; in almost no time at all we found a group of 5 Smooth-billed Anis foraging in a weedy field. It's good to know that this family group persists, as it's the last consistently seen group in Florida. We were able to watch these odd cuckoo cousins for a good 20 minutes before it was time to head off to the airport for departures and goodbyes. What an end to an already fantastic trip!