After speaking at the inaugural Billings Kid Lit Festival (see Billing’s Riverfront Park: Montana’s Premier Songbird Hotspot?), I awoke at 4:30 the next morning and hit the road by 5:15. My plan was to book it to Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge and start driving around the lake by 8:30. The problem? I kept passing ponds with birds in them—and I, of course, had to stop to find out what they were! My efforts were rewarded with a variety of ducks, Wilson’s Phalaropes, American White Pelicans, Sandhill Cranes and more, but delayed my arrival at Bowdoin until 9:30. Then, even greater disaster struck: I ran into way more birds than I expected at the Bowdoin visitor’s center—including both male and female Baltimore Orioles!
Bowdoin NWR lies at the eastern edge of the Baltimore Oriole’s range, but Braden and I have seen them often enough that it seems certain they breed there. Oh, and seeing both the male and this female offers an added clue!
Finally entering the first five-mile stretch of the loop, I was shocked by how much of the lake had been sucked dry by eastern Montana’s multi-year drought. This really was a disaster and I wondered if I would even find any place conducive to water birds. Meanwhile, I encountered great grassland birds including Long-billed Curlews, Loggerhead Shrike, Chestnut-collared Longspurs, Lark Buntings, and Grasshopper, Vesper, Clay-colored, and Savannah Sparrows. Finally, near the end of the lake, I found water but at pathetically low levels. A much-vaunted Cassin’s Sparrow (discovered by Joshua Covill, I believe) had been observed repeatedly at about Mile 7 of the loop and I ran into Robin Wolcott and her husband who had driven over from Big Fork to see it. While we stood there, Robin did hear the sparrow, but with my crummy ears I couldn’t be sure so didn’t count it. I also had many miles to drive so I kept on truckin’, driving the three hours to Great Falls.
Chestnut-collared LongspurGrasshopper Sparrow
The next morning I again woke early, loaded up the car and arrived at Benton Lake NWR as dawn filtered over the prairie. After the dry conditions at Bowdoin, I fretted about Benton Lake—but my worries were hijacked by what may have been the most astonishing grassland birding experience I’ve ever had. It began with a sighting of a Long-billed Curlew in flight, always a welcome bird. Then, I saw other large shorebirds and stopped to behold the incredible courtship displays of Willets, flying madly around emitting their haunting, looping calls over the prairie. Other curlews joined in and a Marbled Godwit briefly gave chase to a Willet. Meanwhile, meadowlarks sang and a pack of coyotes unleashed their insane yelping cacophony across the landscape—all in the dawn light.
Most birders take Willets for granted, but watching and listening to them display over the prairie where they breed will forever make them a favorite bird ‘o mine.
Suddenly, I spotted a small bird rising high into the sky in an obviously courtship display. “No way,” I excitedly muttered, struggling to focus my camera on the small black dot. My thought? That it could be one of the prairie’s most magical creatures, a Sprague’s Pipit! Alas, Nick Ramsey studied my photos later and suggested it was actually a Horned Lark, and after further study, I agree. Still, it was no less incredible—especially because I didn’t even know that Horned Larks make such displays!
This “Sprague’s Pipit” got me uber-excited, but I learned later that it was almost surely a Horned Lark performing a similar high-altitude display. Thank you, Nick Ramsey, for setting me straight!
Passing the visitor center, I thought that I would finally make my way to the lake and start looking for water birds. Guess again. As soon as I turned right, down the dirt road, I stopped to look at juvenile Horned Larks and saw more Willets and curlews. Then, I spotted one of my top target birds: Upland Sandpipers! I had barely had a chance to look at them, when I saw another top target bird—a Short-eared Owl! As I was snapping some blurry photos of the owl, eight Sharp-tailed Grouse flew low across the road 100 meters in front of me and zoomed like cruise missiles across the prairie—something Braden and I had never seen at Benton Lake. But the best was yet to come . . .
Upland Sandpipers are one of our favorite grassland species—and they undertake one of Earth’s most incredible migrations, traveling from our prairies to southern South America in a matter of weeks each year!
As I was watching the Short-eared Owl, I noticed a white spot perhaps a quarter-mile away. At first I thought it was some man-made structure, but then it moved. I drove closer and raised my binoculars to see a sight I had never in my life observed—a male Sharp-tailed Grouse in full “impress mode” trying to woo a nearby female! Fumbling for my camera, I was so excited that my hands actually shook, and I watched this chase-and-pursue courtship for the next ten minutes. Like so many birds recently, a displaying male grouse was something I never thought I would see, and yet here it was when I was least expecting it!
A hopeful male Sharp-tailed Grouse tries to woo a mildly interested female (left). Sound familiar, gents?
My heart still racing, I finally moved on, and was relieved to see water filling the two main ponds—along with thousands of avocets, ducks, Eared Grebes, Yellow-headed Blackbirds, phalaropes, Forster’s Terns, Franklin’s Gulls, White-faced Ibises and just about everything else I had hoped to see. Water levels looked good to me, but refuge manager Bob Johnson later told me that they struggled to keep the ponds filled. They had the water rights, he said, but it cost so much—think hundreds of thousands of dollars—to pump the water up to the refuge that they had run out of money. That makes it more imperative than ever to support increased funding for our refuges and other wild lands by calling or emailing U.S. Senator Daines and our other representatives.
It’s hard not to love ibises, and I was delighted to see at least nine White-faced during my circumnavigation of Benton Lake.
I had planned to continue on to Freezeout Lake, but after four breathless hours at Benton, I wasn’t sure my sensory systems could handle it. As I said, it was my most incredible grassland birding day ever, and certainly my best at Benton Lake, not just for the species I saw, but for the intimate observations of their natural behaviors as they repeated their ancient life cycles. What’s more, I didn’t see a soul the entire time I was on the driving loop. It gave me a real, reverent feel for what the prairies must have been like before we plowed, grazed, and harnessed the vast majority of them. My wish is that we continue to protect Benton Lake and other vital refuges—and that all of you reading this get to visit there on a summer sunrise of your own.
The only thing better than experiencing the beauty of the prairie is to do it in the company of an Upland Sandpiper and Long-billed Curlew. Can you find them?
After our almost magical previous day, Braden and I debated spending a second day and night in Portal. However, Braden had to be at his job in the Sierras in only five days, and we were already dropping some desirable hotspots from our visit list, so we “bit the birdseed” and packed up camp. Before we left the Chiricahuas, though, we had a major mission: to see one of America’s most sought-after birds, the Elegant Trogon. To be honest, I had seen trogons—including the famed Resplendent Quetzal—in Costa Rica, and Braden and I had both seen trogons again in Ecuador, although not the Elegant. The idea that this very exotic-looking bird actually bred in the U.S., however, made the quest almost irresistible. Fortunately, the trogon hangouts along Cave Creek are pretty well-known as at least two or three pairs breed there. We drove slowly without hearing any and then parked at a trailhead to continue our search on foot.
Scott’s Oriole was high on our “to see” list before the trip, and it was gratifying to see them several times on our trip!
Almost immediately, we scored a great look at a brilliant male Scott’s Oriole, and not long afterward, our first good looks at Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher, a bird that immediately shot to the top of my favorite flycatcher list for its unique, bold looks and elusive behavior. We’d gone about half a mile, playing leapfrog with other trogon-hunters, when we heard a distinctive barking call behind us. “That’s it!” Braden exclaimed and I chased him back down the trail to find that the bird was easier to hear than see. I was creeping through some brush when Braden motioned vigorously. “Daddy, look up!” I did—to find myself staring at an orange-and-white butt. I quickly crept out to where Braden stood and, sure enough, there perched the trogon in full glory. The bird sat in a way not conducive to great photos, but we were nonetheless thrilled, and Braden went to retrieve the other trogon-hunters, who “oohed” and “ahed” appropriately.
Well, this photo won’t win me a Pulitzer, but you can tell why this is the bird that comes up most often in Arizona birder conversation!
After a quick stop at one of the town’s feeder stations, we left Portal via New Mexico and headed toward our next Arizona destination, paralleling the border. Seeing the border again after six years proved a shock. When we had visited in 2016, the border remained “wall-free”. We had observed low vehicle barriers and perhaps some barbed wire, but little that would impede wildlife. This time it was a much different story as an ugly steel barrier stretched from horizon to horizon, an all but impenetrable obstacle erected with little or no thought to the many animals that migrate back and forth through the desert. That, of course, is not to mention the human toll of the wall and the dishonest politics of blame and xenophobia that led to its creation.
The newly-erected border wall not only prevents normal movements of myriad animal species—with potentially devastating impacts—it divides historically connected communities and fuels horrible relations with a country we benefit greatly from.
Pushing on, we stopped for lunch in Sierra Vista, by-passing world-famous Ramsey Canyon (sorry, Nick!), and proceeded to a destination highlighted in the movie The Big Year: Patagonia. By now, our first real Arizona heat had begun to set in, but we stopped twice, first at the Arizona Birding Tours feeders and then at the wonderful oasis of Tucson Audubon’s Paton Center for Hummingbirds. And yes, we did see hummingbirds! Violet-crowned and Broad-billed were the stars, but Anna’s and Black-chinned also availed themselves of our attention.
We generally had poor luck capturing the glorious colors of our new Lifer hummingbirds, but at least this Violet-crowned posed nicely for us at Patagonia’s Paton Center for Hummingbirds.
Both locations also proved a magnet for other Arizona staples including Gila and Ladder-backed Woodpeckers; Blue Grosbeaks; Bewick’s Wrens; Hooded Orioles; and most surprising, Yellow-breasted Chat. However, by late mid-afternoon, the effects of four days of non-stop travel and birding were starting to tell on us, and we decided to take the night off at an air-conditioned hotel in nearby Nogales. We needed the rest, and we also had to make an important decision—how to spend our last full day in Arizona!
Braden’s Big Year Count at the end of the day: 386! (Beginning of year goal: 400)
One thing we learned on this trip is that Gila Woodpeckers do not always sit posed on top of a perfect saguaro cactus!
It’s been a while since we posted, and that’s no accident. When Braden landed a field job monitoring Northern Goshawks in California’s Sierras for the summer, I impulsively offered to drive him there—via Arizona and Southern California. We had wanted to return to Arizona since falling in love with the state during our Big Year in 2016. The fact that Braden was out to smash his own Big Year record with a goal of 400 species made the argument even stronger, especially after he and Nick Ramsey had ransacked the state of Florida only weeks before, followed by our amazing time birding New York City. So on May 22, rashly ignoring the price of gasoline, Braden and I made a beeline down Interstate 15, pulling over to pick up Thick-billed Longspurs near Dillon, Sage Thrashers and Rock Wrens in southern Idaho, and Burrowing Owls and phalaropes at Antelope Island near Salt Lake City. After a short, peaceful night in Kanab and a stop to ogle the rapidly disappearing Lake Powell, we rolled into Phoenix for our first major Arizona stop of the trip: Prospector Park, east of Phoenix.
We found Rock Wrens at a delightful I-15 rest area of lava called Hell’s Half Acre in southern Idaho. Don’t pass it up!
As usual, Braden ferreted out our hotspots for the trip and Prospector Park blew away all expectations. An unlikely-looking suburban park with playing fields and lots of lawn, we tumbled out of the car and began racking up Life Birds before we could utter “Holy Bird, Batman!” As soon as he raised his binoculars to his eyes, Braden called out “Abert’s Towhee!” Five minutes later, “Gilded Flicker”—the last ABA woodpecker I needed for my Life List. This was not to mention the gobs of Year Birds Braden needed to advance toward his magic 400 number. In fact, one of the great things about Arizona is that for Montanans, almost every bird we see is likely to be a Year Bird. Verdin, Ladder-backed and Gila Woodpeckers, Vermillion Flycatcher, Lucy’s Warbler, Gambel’s Quail, Curved-billed Thrasher—and another Lifer, Bendire’s Thrasher. For a birder, Arizona truly is a pot ‘o gold.
Gilded Flicker was a species I had needed for several years to complete my ABA woodpecker list. Okay, I admit it—not the most exciting critter, but we both enjoyed seeing it nonetheless.
Not for the first time, one of our most fun finds turned out not to be a native species, but an exotic. We were completing our circuit around the park when we noticed a group of (I think) Mennonite birders staring at something in the grass. We couldn’t tell what they were until green shapes flew over to another patch of grass. “Rosy-faced Lovebirds!” Braden called with delight. It was a species he had especially hoped to see—and another Lifer for both of us. We spent a satisfying fifteen minutes just watching these little guys as they gathered grass seed heads—presumably to eat, but perhaps also for nesting material.
Introduced parrots such as these Rosy-faced Lovebirds always stir conflicting emotions in Braden and me. I mean, they definitely don’t belong here, but dang it, why do they have to be so darned cute?
But we had miles to go before we slept, so we reluctantly climbed back in the car for that night’s destination, Safford, where we checked into a cheap motel—only to find bed bugs hiding under the mattress. After quickly getting a refund, we headed to a pricier, bed-bug free place down the street (and yes, we checked the mattresses there, too!) for a welcome, but short night’s sleep. Our two-day, 1270-mile drive had already netted us five Life Birds and raised Braden’s Big Year total from 322 to 345 species—and we hadn’t even reached our first real destination. Would we be able to get Braden to 400? Things were looking good, but in birding as in life, nothing is certain . . .
While not nearly as showy as her mate (right), female Vermillion Flycatchers have a subtle beauty we’ve come to appreciate—especially when they pose so nicely!
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)
Braden and Nick are close to the finish line! This penultimate day of their epic Florida adventure would bring revelation, frustration, traffic jams, and finally, the realization of a key (no pun intended) target species of the trip. They also happened to be nearing their goal of 200 species for their expedition—as well as moving Braden significantly along in his quest to see 400 species during his 2022 Big Year. Read on to find out what happens . . .
Unfortunately, sleep was not in our immediate future after leaving the Keys that night. We pulled back into the Everglades, passing the campsite I’d enjoyed the night before, Chuck-will’s-widow calls sailing through our rolled-down windows. As we drove south in the dark towards Flamingo, the “town” at the bottom of the glades, we scanned the roads looking for our targets: snakes. Soon enough, Nick spotted one, and we pulled off the road, turning on our emergency lights so oncoming cars wouldn’t run us, or the snake, over as we walked down the road towards it. We left Dixie in the car, given that this snake was a Florida Cottonmouth, and probably could have killed Dixie if she got too close. The snake coiled on the warm road, its mouth open, and we showed another group of people that pulled over to see what we were photographing. Our spirits high, we headed back to the car—only to discover that Dixie had peed all over both seats. The smell infiltrated our noses, and we wiped up the mess with various towels and toilet paper that would be going in the next garbage can we came across.
Half an hour later, we rolled into the dark parking lot of a wooded trail near Flamingo. We set off in the dark, using a stick to brush spiderwebs out of the way and looking back frequently to make sure we wouldn’t get lost. Eventually, the trees gave way to a massive field of saltbush, slightly silver in the moonlight. This was the winter home of another incredibly elusive species, the Black Rail. This bird, a member of a group of birds already known to be difficult to find, was the size of a mouse and completely nocturnal. If Mangrove Cuckoo wasn’t the hardest regularly-occurring species to see in North America, it was definitely Black Rail. While hearing them was slightly easier, they didn’t seem to know that as we played for them in the dark, and we walked back to the car, our legs covered in scratches from the saltbushes, after forty fruitless minutes of searching. Nick fell asleep immediately as I took the wheel, just trying to get a little further north before crashing so the driving would not be as terrible during the next few days. I didn’t get far, however, and pulled into another parking lot. Between the smell of urine and the oppressive humidity, I didn’t get very much sleep that night.
Birds such as this juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron helped compensate for a terrible night’s sleep and Dixie’s, ahem, perfuming of the car seats!
At seven, Nick drove us to our next spot, a place called the L31W Canal, a little northeast of the Everglades. Struggling against my fatigue, I stepped out of the car in the brightening sky, and we began trudging along a straight road bordered by brambles on one side and grassy pine forest on the other. We had several goals here, the primary one being a Smooth-billed Ani that had been hanging out for a while. After doing some digging on eBird, I discovered that the ani was a ways down the dusty road, and I sighed, preparing for a long, hot, uneventful hike. Fortunately, I was quickly proven wrong.
We passed another pair of birders, one of them guiding the other. Nick pointed out the calls of Northern Bobwhites, quail I hadn’t seen since South Texas and had never before heard, and all of a sudden, an orange blur caught my eye. I looked to the right, where a beautiful Barn Owl had just alighted on top of a tall, branchless snag.
This was the best photo I could manage of my first really good look at a Barn Owl.
“Holy cow, look!” I said, pointing as all four of us birders turned towards it and raised our various devices (camera, binoculars, and in the guide’s case, a scope). The bird had dark eyes and a grayish, circular face peering at us in the morning fog. It took off before I was able to secure any good pictures, its flight reminiscent of a bounding rabbit. We watched the Barn Owl, a species I had only seen the butt of before, our eyes transfixed on the vibrant orange of its wings as it floated around for a while and then disappeared. It was almost like the birds had seen my poor mood and responded accordingly, putting the smile back on my face—and they were just getting started. In fact, the best birding of the entire trip unfolded before us.
As we scanned the pine savannah to our right, searching for White-tailed Kites, Nick pointed out Eastern Meadowlarks, a bird I somehow hadn’t seen until now. Pishing in agricultural parts of the walk yielded a variety of sparrows, including Savannah and, surprisingly, a Grasshopper Sparrow, a bird I associated with the shortgrass prairie of Eastern Montana rather than the humid scrubland of south Florida. More Swallow-tailed Kites appeared above us, circling above the pineywoods as if cheering us on. At one point, a bright red bird zoomed across my path, briefly perching up in a low bush—a male Painted Bunting! The bird was even more stunning than I’d expected, with its deep blue head, green back and brilliant crimson belly lit up in the sun.
The L31W Canal continued to deliver great birds with my first ever Eastern Meadowlark and a spectacular male Painted Bunting.
While we didn’t find the ani, the other birders pointed out other rare species to us. This place seemed to be a rarity hotspot, which became apparent with a kingbird flock we found. Western Kingbirds were regular winter residents in this area, but this flock also included both a Cassin’s Kingbird (a Western species) and a Tropical Kingbird (a tropical species), and I learned the difference between the three as we watched them fly around us. As much as Nick and I wanted to stay longer, we had miles to cover and Mangrove Cuckoos to find, so we said goodbye to the other birders and began the drive through the glades towards the Gulf Coast.
This was my first time getting to directly observe the differences between Tropical (shown above), Cassin’s, and Western Kingbirds in the field.
Yet again, we drove through prime Snail Kite habitat, and yet again, we found no Snail Kites. The sawgrass marshes gave way to densely forested glades as we drove along the Tamiami Trail, and we pulled into the visitor center for Big Cypress National Preserve for a quick glance around the center grounds. While we did see a fair number of birds along the drive and at the visitor center, the main attractions were the aquatic creatures. Amazingly, we spotted a pair of porpoises in the canal as well as a Brown Pelican, both an unusually far distance inland. That meant that somehow, this canal must have had some saltwater. What’s more, at the visitor center we found large schools of fish, including mean-looking Florida Gar. In front of our eyes, a Softshell Turtle snagged one of them and was promptly ambushed by several more. However, the most mind-blowing animals were the alligators. Dozens sulked in the canal, and at the visitor center alone I counted thirty or so, all within several feet of the humans peering at them from the safety of the boardwalk.
Eventually, the scenery changed as we left Snail Kite habitat and entered the habitat of the snowbirds, people who migrated south from the northern United States to their homes in the warmth of Florida. More specifically, we were in Cape Coral, a hot, concrete-covered town known for its tourists as well as another species that I’d only seen previously in the prairies of Montana: the Burrowing Owl. A threatened, urban owl population existed in this part of Florida, surviving in parks, yards and abandoned lots here only because of the protection the city provided. As we pulled up to the Cape Coral Public Library, we saw the fencing and stakes marking their burrows, although no birds were to be found. The heat of the day seemed to be keeping them down, so we headed west, towards our last chance at Mangrove Cuckoo: Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island.
Fish Crows entertained us in many of South Florida’s habitats, including mangroves.
Again, this refuge caught me off guard. I’d expected large marshes and ponds, similar to Montana’s refuges. Instead, we were met with thick, tall, healthy mangroves. The trees were larger and denser than what we’d seen in the Keys, and more accessible too. We drove the main refuge loop, stopping at various trails to play for the cuckoo. One boardwalk in particular displayed the complexity of the Red Mangrove ecosystem, giving us great looks at the trees’ prop roots as they plunged into the shallow, salt-covered mud, and the crabs scampering up their trunks. Fish leapt from the water of the mangrove-encased bays, and we spotted a few shorebirds and waders wherever land showed itself. Here, again, the primary songs we heard were those of Prairie Warblers, singing from all around us in this perfect breeding habitat. And yet again, more Swallow-tailed Kites flew over us, reminding us of the excitement we’d felt when we’d first seen them at Merritt Island.
As we left Ding Darling, cuckoo-less, we discovered what else the area was known for: traffic—the worst traffic I’d ever been in, hood-to-bumper cars stretching for miles as people tried to get off the island. We probably could have gotten off Sanibel faster if we’d been as we covered three or so miles in roughly an hour. Eventually, though, we made our escape, and headed to a nearby baseball field in a last ditch attempt for Burrowing Owls. Again, though, after half an hour of walking around, they evaded us, frustration rising inside us. While the day had been great, we’d missed every single target—no ani, no cuckoo, no kites and no Burrowing Owls, not to mention the uncomfortable night spent looking for nonexistent Black Rails. As the sun began to set, a baseball game started next to us. I stared as the young Little League players hit line drives over each others’ heads. A single ball flew into the outfield, and then I saw it: yellow fencing, located just beyond the baseball diamond. I raised my binoculars, revealing two brown lumps perched on the chain link fence within the yellow caution tape.
“I’ve got em!” I said, and Nick and I began running, Dixie leading the way. As we got close, we put Dixie on a leash, lying down to photograph what we’d found: two incredibly cooperative Burrowing Owls perched in front of us, one on the lawn and one on the fence above the first. They stared at us, their mottled brown-and-white pattern complementing their intense, unmoving eyes. Nick and I moved a little further to take a selfie. Finally, we’d found something we were looking for!
Finally, after an afternoon-long search complete with horrendous South Florida traffic, we were rewarded with a great look at Burrowing Owls in Cape Coral.
We ended our day at a campsite just south of Gainesville at roughly eleven o’clock, a surprisingly earlier bedtime compared to the rest of the trip. While my goal was sleep, Nick went off in search of Eastern Whip-poor-wills. I lay there, in the back of Nick’s truck, thinking about where we’d been. After spending the day in the glades and the mangroves, we were back in the Pineywoods, hoping for another chance at their birds tomorrow before heading back to New Orleans. While we’d gotten several of my target birds for the trip so far, we’d missed an unfortunate number, and I’d hoped that tomorrow would go better. Would it? Or would we miss everything yet again, to return to Louisiana only with a few of the birds we’d set out to find? Stay tuned to find out!
