We continue our spring birding blog blitz by picking up on our New York City trip last week and the nail-biting account of our Central Park birding adventure. If you’re afraid you will get TOO excited while reading this, I suggest you ask someone to hold your hand. And don’t forget to tune in tomorrow for our next post “Birding Brooklyn”!
On Monday, Tessa and I left Amy to continue recovering and rode the Hudson Line up to see our good friends, fellow author Larry Pringle and his delightful wife Susan. After taking a great walk at Nyack Beach State Park and eating a nice lunch, we returned to Manhattan in time to meet Braden at Penn Station after his first year as a college student! Bright and early the next morning, though, he and I jumped on the C train to do something we’d dreamed about since we began birding eight years ago: bird Central Park during spring migration! (Well, after a stop at Liberty Bagels on 35th St., that is.)
People often ask us the key to successful birding. Our trip to New York provided the definitive answer: bagels.
Just as Tessa and I had done two days earlier, we jumped off at 81st St. and immediately crossed over into Central Park, entering a particularly birdy area known as The Ramble. As mentioned in our last post, I worried that the birds might have left NYC already. Most migrating passerines only appear in the park during brief windows ranging from a few days to 2-4 weeks. They also come in waves that one can easily miss. Within a few minutes, however, the birds put my fears to rest when Braden called out a Black-throated Blue Warbler, a Life Bird for me and one of the most stunning of all warblers. Over the next hour and a half, a veritable songbird hit parade followed with sightings of Worm-eating Warbler, Nashville Warblers, Northern Parulas, Northern Waterthrushes, American Redstarts, Swainson’s and Hermit Thrushes, Magnolia Warbler and much more, including a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak high in the trees.
Black-throated Blue Warbler landed at Number 502 on my ABA (American Birding Association) Area Life List—and what an entry it was!
Not the best view, but this was our first male Rose-breasted Grosbeak since we’d hit High Island, Texas during our 2016 Big Year—so we took it!
Among birders, it’s a well-known fact that seeing a lot of birds can generate an enormous appetite, so Braden and I were forced to sit down and attack our bagels. Mmmm . . . lox shmear . . . Partly satiated and with cream cheese smearing our faces, we again rose and made our way to our second birdy destination—an area of Central Park called North Woods. Along the way, we passed multiple landmarks familiar to anyone who has ever watched movies or Seinfeld including Belvedere Castle, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir (where Dustin Hoffman jogged just before getting his teeth ripped out without anesthetic by a sadistic dentist), and the Central Park Tennis Center. We also made more bird discoveries such as a large group of White-crowned Sparrows.
Surprisingly, large numbers of White-crowned Sparrows are rare in Central Park. We were lucky to run across a group of five on our walk up to the North Woods section of the park.
To be honest, however, we didn’t think the North Woods could possibly match The Ramble for birds, but we soon learned that . . . it CAN! Two targets, a Yellow-breasted Chat and a Red-headed Woodpecker had created a buzz in that section of the park, and we (ahem) chatted with several birders about them, but it was the other birds that grabbed our attention. These included incredibly cooperative Black-and-White Warblers, glorious Chestnut-sided Warblers, a Veery and Blue-headed Vireo. We struck out on the chat, but making our way east, we followed the creek through an area called The Loch and continued to rack up amazing sightings. These included a quick glimpse at the now-famous Red-headed Woodpecker, several Red-bellied Woodpeckers, a Yellow-throated Vireo, a Great Egret flying overhead, and a bird I especially wanted to see, Swamp Sparrow.
You wouldn’t think an animal that is just black and white could be so stunning, but Braden and I savor each encounter with Black-and-White Warblers.
By now we had birded for five straight hours and our energy was starting to flag, so we reluctantly dragged ourselves to the 103rd St. subway station and caught a ride back downtown. We learned later that we might have picked up Cape May and Blackburnian Warblers if we had hit a part of the Ramble called the Point, but did we mind? Only a little. In fact, our day had exceeded all of our expectations for birding Central Park. During our long morning, we had logged a remarkable 57 species including an amazing 13 kinds of warblers—as many as we could hope to find during a whole year in Montana!
Though I’d seen Chestnut-sided Warblers when taking Braden back to college in Maine last fall, this was my first technicolor, breeding male!
Even better, when we returned to our hotel, Amy was feeling much better and had spent the day with Tessa at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, so we all went out to a nice meal at Kung Fu Kitchen. Can you spell pork soup dumplings???? Then, while Braden and Tessa strolled Times Square, Amy and I set off to see The Book of Mormon, a musical we were supposed to see in Seattle when covid struck. But lest you think Braden’s and my Big Apple birding adventures had concluded, stay tuned for our next post . . .
We interrupt our New York adventures to bring you Braden’s final post on his and Nick’s epic Florida adventure. As you’ll see, it was a wild ride. Tomorrow we will resume New York with our visit to Central Park. You won’t want to miss it!
A loud bang shook the car as we sped along the highway through the worst rainstorm I’d ever experienced. I looked at Nick.
“Did you hear that?? That lightning bolt almost hit us!”
We’d been driving through this hurricane-level rain for about fifteen minutes by now, gripping the edges of our seats as Nick avoided large puddles and watched the lights of the cars in front of us. After reading about flash floods, I had my fingers crossed that our car wouldn’t get swept away. Thankfully, after about half an hour, the water stopped pouring from the sky just as suddenly as it had started, and we celebrated by driving north towards Alabama, with one last place to bird before the sun went down.
Strike a Pose! Many of Florida’s Sandhill Cranes are unusual in that they a) are non-migratory and b) live in very urban areas. As you can see, this makes them a photographer’s best friends!
That morning had been a rollercoaster of bird-related emotions. We awoke at dawn, saying goodbye to even more Chuck-wills-widows as we drove to a large pineywoods preserve in search of the specialty birds we’d missed on the drive down. While yet again the beauty of this southeastern pine forest dazzled us, we only got fleeting glimpses of a Bachman’s Sparrow, and left the preserve disappointed. Next, we sidled up to a cemetery, home to a wintering population of Henslow’s Sparrows. We stomped around in the thorns for roughly forty minutes, leaving with no sparrows and legs covered in scratches. In a last ditch effort to get a new species for the trip, we found a small park in Gainesville home to a population of Red-headed Woodpeckers. Thankfully, Nick spotted them, flying around a group of burned snags in the distance.
We grabbed McDonald’s in Gainesville and headed North, planning to stop at several more spots for Bachman’s Sparrow before booking it towards the Alabama border. As we left town, though, my dad called me.
“Hey guys, how’s it going? Have you guys been to Sweetwater Wetlands yet?”
“No,” I said, looking at Nick slightly confused, “What’s there?”
“Snail Kites! And a bunch of other cool things.”
“Wait, really?!” I said, quickly pulling the hotspot up on eBird. Sure enough, Snail Kites had been seen there yesterday, and seemed to consistently visit the park. Unfortunately, the wetlands were in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go. After a brief discussion, we decided to go anyway—after all, Snail Kites were still one of our biggest targets on the trip. We’d had no idea they could still be found this far north, but if we had one last shot at them, why not take it?
We pulled up at the wetlands, putting Dixie in Nick’s backpack and starting our speedrun of the hotspot. The area was a large, freshwater marsh, divided by gravel trails quickly warming up under the midday sun. We split up, trying to cover as much ground as possible. Soon, it became apparent to us that there were indeed birds here.
Warblers and vireos serenaded us from the massive live oaks standing in the entryway to the area, and water birds were everywhere. Many of these were fearless, too—I managed to get great photos of both Sandhill Cranes and Limpkins standing less than ten feet from me. The Limpkins signaled that there were snails around, and we kept careful eyes on the sky as we walked. Me and Nick met up after half an hour.
Our last-minute visit to Sweetland Wetlands in Gainesville nabbed us our first good looks at Limpkins—and many other birds.
“Any kites?”
“Well, there are some over there. But they’re Swallow-tailed, not Snail.”
“Me neither. I heard a King Rail over here, so we could probably play for that…wait. Are those harriers?”
Nick pointed behind me at three distant raptors soaring behind us over the marsh. I raised my binoculars. The birds were brown, with white rumps and slender wings, two features common to Northern Harriers. However, they were flying differently. The birds slowly drew nearer, and before long, we could see their striped faces, indicative of juvenile Snail Kites.
“Snail Kites!” Nick yelled, and we high-fived as we watched one of our top targets for the trip fly closer to us. While the kites never got as close as the Swallow-taileds on our first day, we still got decent views. We’d only seen these birds because my dad had been following our adventure and found us a reliable spot to look for them!
Our last shot at Snail Kites paid off big as we backtracked to Sweetwater Wetlands on a hot tip from my dad!
Now, as the rain on the highway subsided, I began to reflect on the trip. It had been an absolute whirlwind of fun and disappointment, euphoria and frustration. Had it not been for Sweetwater Wetlands, we would have missed a significant chunk of our targets for the trip (including up-close Sandhill Crane and Limpkin). We’d chased many birds and came up short often, although we had a few successes with the flamingo at St. Marks and grassquit in the Keys. We’d driven hundreds of miles and dozens of hours, sacrificing sleep and food for the birds. And we’d seen so much of the country too, despite only truly getting to know one state. Florida had continued to amaze me, with its extensive saltmarshes and stunted mangrove forests, tacky fishing villages and five-star hotels. We’d birded in so many habitats I hadn’t even realized existed—Florida savannah scrub, Caribbean Pine Rockland, sawgrass glades and urban parks covered in animals from every continent.
We can thank the abundance of Great Egrets and many other birds to the visionary conservation efforts of Teddy Roosevelt who, among other things, helped put a stop to plume-hunting for hats.We need similarly radical action today to save many of our planet’s species—including ourselves.
As for the birds, we’d done pretty damn well. We’d found success on about half of our chases, missing stuff like the Smooth-billed Ani and Black-headed Gull finding other rarities like the Black-faced Grassquit in the Keys. Thanks to Sweetwater Wetlands, we had hit most of our targets, only missing the Mangrove Cuckoo (which, it turned out, it was the totally wrong season for) and several of the Miami specialties, plus Bachman’s Sparrow, which we still had a shot at. I’d obtained some of the best photos I’d ever gotten, including Prairie Warbler and Blue-headed Vireo, and really gotten to know several species that I’d had little to no experience with prior to the trip. The two species that topped my “Bird of the Trip” list were the aforementioned Prairie Warbler and Swallow-tailed Kite. I’d “discovered” an entirely new breeding population of the warblers, having had no idea that this species could thrive in coastal Floridian mangroves, and learned to recognize their buzzy, rising song every time Nick and I had set foot in that strange, coastal habitat. The kites had accompanied us everywhere we’d gone, and we’d seen them soaring above us almost every day of the trip, not discriminating between any certain habitat. Even after I returned to Maine the next day, it was hard to break the habit of scanning the skies for these sharp-looking black and white birds.
As the sun set on our Florida adventure, one of our nemesis birds—Bachman’s Sparrow—finally put in a solid appearance, and in a place where my dad used to camp with his dad fifty years ago.
As our car raced towards the Alabama border, Nick and I decided to make one last stop. We were driving past Pensacola, where I’d gone for Thanksgiving the previous fall, and we headed north, heading to Blackwater State Forest following a Google Maps pin that supposedly had Red-cockaded Woodpeckers. The Honda Pilot pulled over on a dirt road as the sun began to set, dangerously low on gas, and we jumped out, cameras and binoculars in hand. Dixie immediately took off into the tall grass, covering herself in the mud formed by the intense rainstorm that had just ended. The longleaf pines towered upwards around us—this was the healthiest patch of this habitat we had seen during the whole trip. Suddenly, as we began walking, a melodious song echoed across the pine savannah.
“Bachman’s Sparrow!” said Nick, whipping out his phone to play for the bird. Almost as soon as the song escaped the phone’s speakers, a small, brown sparrow zipped towards us, landing on the low branch of a tree. I raised my binoculars, and sure enough, there it was–a bird I’d searched for and missed half a dozen times in the last six months. The bird’s plumage was not particularly special, but the music it created stuck with me for hours after we left. Several more sparrows began singing from the grass as the sun set, and were joined by a chorus of Pine Warblers and Brown-headed Nuthatches. On our way back to the car, we suddenly heard some loud calls similar to that of a Hairy Woodpecker. We looked over in the trees just in time to see a family group of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers fly in, moving up and down the pines energetically. I walked off into the grass in an attempt to get some photos, and called my dad back.
Despite the lousy photo, finding Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in a place my dad had spent his summers proved the perfect way to round up our epic adventure.
“We got the woodpeckers…hell, we got everything!”
We’d ended the trip right where we’d started, in these strange, fire-dependent southeastern forests. Not everything had gone right, but Nick and I had gotten a great story out of it. We’d seen so many birds, and mammals, and plants, and reptiles and more, and as I boarded the plane from New Orleans the following morning, wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed in a week and clutching my camera and binoculars, I smiled. Florida had dragged me in, and I couldn’t wait to return to the land of the grass pines.
Trip Statistics!
Miles Driven: 2,100
Hours Driven: 31
Bird Species: 197
States Driven Through: 4
Counties Driven Through: 43
Life Birds: 23
Year Birds: 143
Bird(s) of the Trip: Prairie Warbler, Swallow-tailed Kite and Bachman’s Sparrow
Birds to Date for Braden’s Big Year: 244 (at end of Florida trip)
We know you’ve been dying for Braden’s last installment of his Florida trip, but just to keep you waiting impatiently a bit longer, here is the first of a new series for you: our spring trip to New York—during migration season! Stay tuned for rapid installments, and to make sure you don’t miss a single one, be sure to subscribe by filling out the boxes down and to the right!
All birders have bucket lists and birding New York’s Central Park during spring migration stood close to the top of ours. Just when that would happen, we didn’t know, but this year the end of Braden’s spring semester, ahem, pigeon-tailed perfectly with my daughter’s desire to return to New York City, so we decided to make a family trip of it. We did not plan the exact dates around spring migrants, but first encounters bore promise.
Seeing an original copy of Audubon’s Birds of America in all its giant glory was an unexpected, great way to launch my New York birding experience!
Amy, Tessa, and I arrived Friday, May 6, but Braden wouldn’t pull into Penn Station until the following Monday and I tried to hold off birding until then. I failed. Despite a rainy day Saturday, we wandered back through Bryant Park after an excursion to the New York Public Library, where I got to see a copy of Audubon’s original Birds of America (WOW!). Bryant Park lacked good habitat, but in a few short minutes I glimpsed Gray Catbirds, White-throated Sparrows, and a Hermit Thrush. The message was clear: THE BIRDS ARE HERE! Even more exciting, Tessa and I planned to take Amy to a well-known hotspot, Governor’s Island, for Mother’s Day the next day. Alas, that night Amy came down with a crummy cold, so Tessa and I decided to instead plan a visit to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
“I’ve been framed!” Actually, this Gray Catbird is not in jail—just visiting the Bright Lights and Big City Life on its way to breeding grounds.
The next morning, as is my wont, I rose way before Tessa so decided to do a bit ‘o bird reconnoitering before we hit the AMNH. Our overpriced, mediocre hotel stood fairly close to the Hudson and I thought There’s gotta be some birds down along the river, right? Uh, not really. Sure, I saw a cormorant, robins, a couple of fish crows (identified by their anemic calls) and the usual city birds—along with a giant aircraft carrier—but was disappointed by the paucity of greenery. On Google Maps, however, I noted a park a few blocks uptown and decided, “What the heck.”
My first cool bird of NYC, White-throated Sparrows are one of Braden’s and my favorites—probably because we have to work so hard to see them in Montana!
DeWitt Clinton Park would be considered a “postage stamp park” in Montana, but I’m guessing it’s an invaluable resource for its neighborhood New Yorkers, consisting of a doggie park and various courts. More important, even before entering I saw that it held trees and strips of shrubbery, and my pulse quickened with the possibilities. Sure enough, as soon as I walked up the first steps, I spotted a small shape scampering along a tree trunk—one of my favorite birds, Black-and-White Warbler! My Bird Excitement Meter surging, I hunkered down to some serious birding, and was rewarded by more catbirds and White-throated Sparrows, and then saw both Hermit and Swainson’s Thrushes. The biggest surprise? A Common Yellowthroat, very far from water—an obvious migrant passing through!
What are you doing here? Seeing a Common Yellowthroat in a postage stamp park in Manhattan both surprised me—and got me really excited about what else might be passing through the crowded megalopolis!
Returning to the hotel, I made sure Amy had what she needed for a day in bed, and then Tessa and I caught the C train up to 81st St. We had ANHM entry reservations for noon and arrived early enough for a quick stroll of Central Park across the street. I kept my expectations low as it was an overcast day and, well, I just didn’t know what spring migration might be like Out East. Within a couple of hundred yards, however, I spotted a small tan bird on the ground with a bold stripe on its crown. “Worm-eating Warbler?” I considered. “No, Ovenbird!” And not just one, but two.
Another bird challenging to find in Montana, Ovenbirds were evidently swinging through Manhattan in large numbers the week we arrived!
Emboldened, we continued walking, seeing catbirds, a blue jay, more WTSPs, a Red-tailed Hawk, and a surprise Chipping Sparrow. Then, a bold flash of yellow caught my eye. I had worried that I might not be able to ID some of the Eastern warblers, but this was a bright, bold male. Even better, it’s a bird I had for years been staring at on the cover of The Sibley Guide to Birds—Magnolia Warbler! Honestly, the bird was just stunning. I didn’t have my camera, but in a way that was better as I could just focus on enjoying this first male MAWA I had ever seen. Even Tessa, a non-birder, appreciated the warbler’s sublime beauty. With a twenty-minute list of 12 species (not even including Rock Pigeon!), we headed off to the museum, fingers crossed that the birds would still be here when Braden and I would get to bird Central Park in earnest two days later.
Welcome to Blog 4 of Braden’s series about his and Nick Ramsey’s remarkable birding excursion through Florida. Nowhere in the U.S. do things get more biologically bizarre than in South Florida, and especially in the Keys. Enjoy and, as always, please feel free to share this post.
A Great Horned Owl, the second owl species of our trip so far, greeted us as a silhouette on a power pole as we raced south from the Everglades at dawn. After waking to the sound of more Chuck-wills-widows, we’d packed up the car, and now were on our way towards the southernmost point in Florida. We crossed a small bridge overlooking the slowly-brightening shallow waters of south Florida, and suddenly, we were there: the Florida Keys.
If you need convincing about how invasive species are impacting the planet, go no further than Florida!
Our first stop, like many of our stops today, had one major target: Mangrove Cuckoo. This species, one of North America’s most elusive, had consistent records only from the very southernmost part of the state, barring a few reliable spots farther up the Gulf side. The habitat looked right—the part of Key Largo we’d just entered was absolutely coated in Red and Black Mangroves, and as we pulled into a dirt parking lot, we were greeted with the songs of White-eyed Vireos, a species I had not expected to breed in the mangroves. This area, especially later in the season, could be stellar for vireos, with Red-eyed, White-eyed, Blue-headed, Yellow-throated, Black-whiskered, Thick-billed, Yellow-green and even Mangrove all possible. Unfortunately, we were still a bit early for many of these birds, and we saw and heard only White-eyed throughout the day.
The first stop was not particularly productive, and we realized that we were in the wrong habitat for the cuckoo. Despite having driven through mangroves to get here, the road wound its way through almost-subtropical deciduous forest rather than the water-submerged trees we needed to find a cuckoo. Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park(say that three times), just down the road, proved considerably better, and as we got out of the car Nick got on a warbler almost immediately.
“Black-throated Blue!”
I was thrilled to add this Black-throated Blue warbler to my Life List—one of the last wood warblers I had yet to see.
“Really?” I said, jogging up to where he was standing. Sure enough, a darker, blue and black warbler hopped into view a few feet above us in a tree, and began responding as we played Blue-headed Vireo calls. It was one of my last Eastern wood-warbler needs, and one of the best of them at that. Soon, several parulas and vireos came to the playback as well, and we found ourselves in a miniature mixed winter flock, something we had been hoping to encounter. Continuing down the path, another lifer appeared.
Two dark pigeons flew over, landing in a snag barely lit by the morning sun, and I raised my binoculars, confirming what I’d suspected. While I could make out few other features aside from the dark gray color, the one feature I saw nailed the identification.
“White-crowned Pigeons!”
White-crowned Pigeons, another Lifer for me, was but one of six members of the pigeon/dove family to greet us in South Florida.
This species, a Caribbean mangrove specialist like the cuckoo, also had a very restricted U.S. range, but where it did occur—specifically here—they were supposedly quite abundant, something we confirmed as we drove farther south. They weren’t the only member of Columbidae present, though. We tallied an astounding six species including Eurasian Collared, Mourning, Common Ground and White-winged Doves plus Rock and White-crowned Pigeons. Who knew that the Keys would be so good for this seemingly random family!
Every key differed, if only slightly, from the last. Resorts and restaurants covered the larger Keys, like Key Largo, and I was surprised to see how much land existed on them. I’d assumed many of these islands would be completely mangrove, but I had assumed wrong, as everywhere we looked we saw dirt, whether put there by humans or not. The smaller keys were the really neat ones though—sometimes only a couple of hundreds of meters wide, the Overseas Highway divided what little land each had. We stopped on many of these small keys to play for Mangrove Cuckoos, with no success, but we did make other cool discoveries. Shorebirds coated the beaches and lagoons, and Magnificent Frigatebirds circled above as commonly as Red-tailed Hawks in Montana. The two most abundant passerines were Prairie Warblers and White-eyed Vireos, both of which appeared to have distinct breeding populations found in the mangroves. The water itself was a stunning blue-green, and I could see why hotels and resorts were so popular here.
After adding Prairie Warbler to my Life List early in the trip, I was astonished to find that they and White-eyed Vireos practically dripped from every bush in the Keys.
While we drove, I kept an eye on the sky. While we’d gotten our trip Swallow-tailed Kite a few days before (and also happened to get one in the Keys), we were still missing another Florida specialty: Short-tailed Hawk. This raptor had a very small population in the United States, and could be told from other Buteos by its often-dark wings, barred tail and small size. On our drive down, however, we didn’t spot any, growing a bit concerned that we might miss them for the trip.
After driving over water for a while, we soon arrived at Big Pine Key, one of the largest islands, not to mention being one of the farthest south. This island was unique, hosting a rare habitat known as Caribbean Pine Rockland, and this new habitat brought a new endemic subspecies: Key Deer. This deer, a miniature version of a White-tailed Deer, only lived on this cluster of islands, and did not occur on Key West, farther south, or on any of the keys farther north. Several other strange species lived here, including Indian Peacock, which had been introduced and established itself on this island. Indian Peacock, despite being found all over the United States as escapees, was only actually countable in this one place in the entire country!
We spent the day so far in mangroves, but at the Blue Hole nature walk we felt transported back to the Pineywoods section of the state. This habitat, like the Pineywoods, was actually fire-dependent, although I had a hard time imagining how, given the tiny geographic area it occupied in the middle of the ocean. We soon arrived at a small wooden platform overlooking a large, mostly clear pond: the Blue Hole. A slightly obnoxious woman welcomed us, pointing out an alligator lying right below the platform, its entire, scaled body visible in the water below us. Further out in the pond, a large silver fish floated aimlessly.
“Tarpon,” said the woman, “Usually a fish only found in saltwater. These guys got deposited by the last hurricane. You see that?” She pointed at a mark on the platform at about the height of my knees. “That’s how high the water was, all over this damn island.”
Nick and I continued, finding ourselves on a large dirt road. “If we walk down this, we should see some deer,” said Nick, who’d been here before. Sure enough, after a few dozen meters, we came across a few feeding in the yard of a vacation home. While they weren’t mind-bogglingly small, they were smaller than any of the White-taileds I’d seen in Montana or Maine, or even northern Florida for that matter. We kept Dixie on a leash as she stared intently at the Key Deer, which were fairly unimpressed by our presence. Before leaving, we also managed to hear an Indian Peacock from somewhere in the pines—another lifer for me.
Wait for it . . . finally, a photo of Nick and Dixie! Oh yeah, and a Florida Key Deer on Big Pine Key.
After finding an early Gray Kingbird (see my post “When Montana Birders Collide“), we continued down to Key West, pulling into the parking lot for the Key West Botanical Gardens. It was only forty minutes before closing time and we cursed ourselves, having hoped to get more time at what was surely one of the best spots to bird in the keys. We split up, heading off into the forest of foreign plants to try to tally as many species as possible. After twenty minutes with almost nothing besides a cooperative Black-and-white Warbler, Nick called me. “I’ve got a mixed flock! Get over here!”
It was odd to see a Gray Kingbird in its natural habitat after seeing a vagrant GRKI in Maine just a couple of months ago.
I was on the other side of the gardens, and took back off the way I’d come, eventually finding him on the other side of a manmade lake. He played his mixed flock playback, and the birds poured in: Prairie, Yellow-throated and Palm Warblers, accompanied by a squadron of catbirds. Two splotchy Summer Tanagers joined the fray, and Nick pointed out a Ruby-throated Hummingbird as it zipped by. I was disappointed in my inability to find anything like this on my own, but was happy that we’d finally found one of the mixed flocks the Keys were known for.
Our last major stop of the day was Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park, a manicured tourist destination that had been hosting a Black-faced Grassquit for several months now. Birders were unsure as to whether this grassquit was wild or not, given that they were a popular cage bird, but a wild population did exist on the Bahamas, not all that far from here. Regardless, it was one of the less exciting rarity chases we’d ever done. We pulled up to the spot it had been reported in, following coordinates others had posted, and located the bird deep in a bush, its ashy head poking out every once in a while, and that’s where it stayed. After getting another birder on it, we continued walking around the park, scanning trees for more warbler flocks and brush piles for rarities. A Merlin flew over, spooking the established Red Junglefowl as they strutted around the lawns, but we found nothing spectacular, and were soon back on the road north. The Keys had been some of what we’d hoped them to be. I’d gotten several lifers, and we’d found a rare—
No, this is not the Short-tailed Hawk we saw, but the Magnificent Frigatebirds that frequently flew over us should convince anyone that the Chicxulub meteor did not wipe out all the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous!
“Wait!” I yelled as we headed north from Key West. “Hawk!”
Nick and I peered through the windshield. Above us, at the very top of a flock of vultures, soared a small, dark-winged buteo with a striped tail and pointed wings.
“Is it Short-tailed?” I asked, trying to think what else it could be.
“There aren’t Red-taileds here,” said Nick, “And dark morph Broad-winged are incredibly rare in the east, if not unreported. That’s a Short-tailed!” “Woohoo!” I yelled, rolling down the window to get better looks as our car zoomed a hundred meters underneath my last, and best lifer of the day. Okay, so maybe the Keys hadn’t been that bad! We’d missed Mangrove Cuckoo, of course, but Nick and I had a plan for that. A place by the name of Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge . . .
Welcome to Episode 3 of Braden’s account of his remarkable Spring Break birding with Nick Ramsey. Part 2, last week, got almost a record number of views, and we have no doubt you’ll love this post every bit as much. I mean, parrots! How can you resist? If you enjoy these posts, please share and subscribe. Thanks for reading!
The heat was already wet and oppressive when I woke around dawn the next morning, after a very minimal amount of sleep. I crawled out of the passenger seat of the car, still groggy, into the gray light of a forest in the process of waking up. Nick was already there, and suggested that we head over to the main parking area for Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, a place famous for its snail-loving birds: more specifically, Limpkins and Snail Kites. We did so, and then began our two-hour tromp around the refuge.
It’s not like there weren’t birds at Loxahatchee. For one, the marshy, reedy areas were filled with Common and Purple Gallinules, both colorful, entertaining water birds that I spent a while photographing. The waders, specifically White Ibises, were around, and kept making flights over us as we scanned the marshes for Limpkin. And in the forested areas, we did manage to draw in a few passerine species, including American Redstarts, a new warbler for the trip, and a very cooperative Blue-headed Vireo.
Blue-headed Vireos are one of several kinds of vireos that wear white “spectacles”.
All-in-all, however, the wildlife refuge proved disappointing. We missed Snail Kite and the only Limpkin we saw was a brown blob disappearing into a stand of trees, never to be seen again. The Gray-headed Swamphens (an Old World exotic marshbird) that Nick had spotted here last time weren’t around, and we didn’t find any of the particularly cool wintering warblers that we could have. Ducks, again, were lacking, and the wader numbers aside from the ibises were notably worse than expected. The day (along with the poor sleeping conditions the night before) was not off to a good start.
Gray-headed Swamphens get less attention than parrots, but are also introduced species to South Florida.
In a search for swamphens, Nick and I drove to a small park on the outskirts of Fort Lauderdale called Markham Park next. This park was situated right next to a part of the Everglades (though not the National Park yet) and was known for having most of the Miami exotics that Nick wanted to see on the trip: Spot-breasted Oriole and White-winged and Yellow-chevroned Parakeets. We picked a small portion of the park nearest to the wetlands and hiked towards them, noting butterflies I’d never seen before, including the Zebra Longwing, which belonged to a tropical genus. Eventually we got to the wetlands, finally nabbing one of our targets for the day. Two giant water-chickens, sporting an even crazier range of colors than Purple Gallinules, lounged in the reeds. Gray-headed Swamphens were related to gallinules and native to southern Asia, and thrived in several places in southern Florida. These were one of many exotics we would see as the day progressed.
Unlike the Gray-headed Swamphen, Purple Gallinules are native members of the rail family. They definitely fit in with Florida’s tropical color scheme.
As far as biodiversity is concerned, south Florida is about as crazy as you can get. Along with a remarkable sweep of native and endemic species, including American Crocodile, Snail Kite and Florida Cottonmouth, hundreds if not thousands of species have been introduced to the area. The United States once had two native parrots. The Carolina Parakeet is now extinct, and the Thick-billed Parrot’s population is too small to support natural wanderings across the Mexican border. Now more than fifty parrot species from Latin America and the Old World have been reported within our country’s borders, most of them from Florida. Many are established too—my dad and I had Nanday and Red-masked Parakeets and Red-crowned Parrots on our life lists from Point Mugu State Park, San Diego, and Brownsville. Florida, though, boasted more species than Texas or California, and later in the day we would be looking for some of them.
First, though, we were headed to Alligator Alley, a large highway cutting across a portion of the Everglades. As we drove away from the suburbs of Miami, the buildings were replaced by sawgrass wetlands as far as the eye could see. I’d never seen any habitat this expansive and undeveloped, and as we drove into healthier and healthier habitat, waders began to lift out of the marsh on both sides of the car. Black-crowned Night-herons flew high overhead while large flocks of White Ibis dropped into distant marshland. It was incredible—I’d only seen this number of birds in one other place—Freezout Lake, Montana. It was as if the grass was covered in patches of cotton composed of egrets and ibises. Every once in a while, a radiantly-pink spoonbill or large Great Blue Heron joined the fray, trailing behind a flock of Tricolored or Little Blue Herons. As Nick drove, I took as many mental pictures as I could—there was no place like this anywhere else on the planet.
I know I posted a picture of a Roseate Spoonbill with White Ibises last week, but figured you wouldn’t mind!
We pulled off the highway towards a small highway rest stop, spooking some lazy Black Vultures. There was an observation tower here, and we hoped to spot some Snail Kites, birds we’d missed at both Loxahatchee and Markham Park. We climbed the tower with Nick’s spotting scope, then got to work scanning the Serengeti of Florida. Right next to us a wide canal provided us with avian entertainment as we looked for the kites. Five Green Herons had taken up residence in the canal, and they began fighting with the other species for prime perching spots overlooking the water. Boat-tailed Grackles, Fish Crows and both Turkey and Black Vultures tussled around us, covering most of the trees and walkways. And from our vantage point, we could see roughly five American Alligators eyeing the birds above them.
Black and Turkey Vultures are always a welcome sight for birders. Not only are they amazing fliers, they usually indicate a pretty healthy habitat.
While we didn’t find any Snail Kites, we did finally get a good look at a Limpkin as it foraged for snails on top of a patch of trash on the other side of the canal. The bird only appeared for a few minutes, and it made me wonder just how many of this species lived in the endless marsh. After checking the other side of the highway and getting poor looks at my lifer Painted Bunting, we drove back into Miami, our minds focusing on exotic species. Iguanas soon dotted the streets, and we got Common Mynas, a songbird introduced from Asia, next to a McDonald’s as we stopped for lunch. Nick pointed out a Peter’s Rock Agama, a funky red-headed lizard native to West Africa, scampering up a palm tree. Then, as we pulled into the Biltmore Hotel parking lot, we immediately heard screeching above us: parakeets.
We piled out of the car just as a large flock touched down in front of us. The flock consisted of both Red-masked and Mitred Parakeets, two very similar species native to South America. Interestingly enough, I’d seen both species before, the former in San Diego and the latter in its native range in Peru. This hotel had more to offer though: it was a roost site for at least half a dozen species. It also happened to be one of the ritziest hotels in Miami, offering rooms between six hundred dollars and two thousand a night, and its towering red walls hosted cavities that parrots liked to roost in. What’s more, it overlooked a large golf course, and Nick and I felt like outsiders as we walked around the courtyard in clothes that hadn’t been washed in several days. This was the kind of place I’d imagined when I’d thought about Florida.
Even though parrots are exotic introductions to Florida, it’s hard not to get excited when a stunning Mitred Parakeet lands in front of you!
While the parakeets were plentiful, we did not find either of our targets: Yellow-chevroned and White-winged Parakeets. Both species, which were substantially smaller than the parakeets, were mostly green, with small markings on the wing that identified them. While Yellow-chevroned was firmly established in the area, White-winged was on the decline, having disappeared from all of South Florida in the last few years. No one understands the cause of this decline was since there appears to be plenty of food (palm nuts) around, and parrot species have coexisted here for decades. Suddenly, though, this species that had been reliable ten years ago was nowhere to be found, mirroring the disappearance of another parrot species from Miami thirty years prior, the Budgerigar.
Our next spot was a run-down park called Pine Woods Park, a place Nick picked out for both Red-whiskered Bulbul and Spot-breasted Oriole, species that had been introduced from southern Asia and central America, respectively. Upon walking through the tall cane grass in the park, we immediately found a beautiful, crested bulbul perched up on a stalk, marking Nick’s first (and spoiler alert, only) lifer for the trip! We marveled at it as two other exotic species, Scaly-breasted Munias and Monk Parakeets, called nearby. Next, we headed to the Baptist Hospital in Kendall, a known location for the oriole. We struck out on the species again, but did get to enjoy more time with Red-masked Parakeets clinging to buildings and Egyptian Geese and Muscovy Ducks with babies running around a nearby lawn. We then drove the neighborhoods, trying and failing to find the oriole, and in a last-ditch effort, returned to Pine Woods Park. Walking among the introduced vegetation, we again struck out but did spot a smaller parakeet flying with the Monk Parakeets above us. It landed and Nick called “Yellow-chevroned Parakeet!” It was no White-winged, but it did bring our total parakeet species count for the day up to five, including a few Nandays we’d seen at Loxahatchee earlier!
One of the world’s largest and most bizarre ducks, the introduced Muscovy Duck is one of the oldest domesticated waterfowl species in the world, having been domesticated in South America before the arrival of the Spanish.
Somewhat more content, we headed south towards Everglades National Park, pulling into the parking lot right outside the entrance at around 8 P.M. I’d requested an earlier night tonight, so we set up a tent for me as Nick prepared to go look for snakes in the glades. As he was about to leave, though, we suddenly heard something go “chuck-willow-widow!” from a stand of trees nearby. Nick looked at me excitedly.
“Chuck-wills-widow!”
Originally from Asia, the Red-whiskered Bulbul was yet another exotic target on our lists for South Florida.
This nocturnal species was not a bird I’d imagined getting on the trip, and we high-fived as we heard at least half a dozen calling from around us. Nick then headed off into the National Park for a few more hours as I dozed off to sleep to the sound of the Chucks. The day had turned out all right after all, and tomorrow we would finally reach our main destination for the trip: the Florida Keys.
