Tag Archives: Kingbirds

Braden’s & Nick’s Epic Florida Adventure, Day 5: Diving into Ding Darling

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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!

Epic Florida Adventure Day 4: Cruising the Keys for Cuckoos

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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 . . .

When Montana Birders Collide, Great Birds Can Happen (Report from Braden)

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There was no Snowy Owl in the field. Someone had reported the owl from the field this morning, but there was nothing white in sight aside from the post office where we’d parked—not even a plastic bag pretending to be a Snowy Owl! I turned to Miles. “I thought Snowy Owls were supposed to be easy in Maine. What do you wanna do now? There was a Gray Kingbird reported from York County, Maine, yesterday. Although that’s a three hour drive…” I suggested, sure that was out of the question.

To my surprise, Miles looked at me. “Well, we missed the owl. Might as well go big or go home!” We piled into the car and headed south!

Miles Scheuering had contacted me a few weeks ago about the fact that he would be in Maine as part of a going-on-three-month road trip he’d been on this fall. I’d run into him a few times in Missoula when he’d attended the University of Montana, but never really gotten the chance to talk to him, so I jumped at the chance of birding together! He’d picked me up at my dorm that morning, neither of us with specific birding targets in mind. Now we were driving towards southern Maine on a whim, hoping that the Caribbean bird that had randomly showed up in a coastal neighborhood would still be there when we arrived. Along the drive, we began filling in our lists for the counties we passed through as I learned about how Miles’s road trip had gone. He’d struck out from Portland, Oregon in September, driving through Colorado up to Montana, and then straight down to the Salton Sea in southern California. He then had shot east through the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas, around the Gulf of Mexico, and up through New England until arriving in Orono to pick me up. 

Having fellow Montana birder Miles Scheuering show up in Maine was a welcome surprise—and led to some BIG BIRDING! Thank you Miles!

And now he found himself again driving south with me in tow to chase what appeared to be only Maine’s fourth ever eBird record of a Gray Kingbird, a Caribbean bird that shouldn’t have been within 1500 miles of Maine but had an unusual habit of straying north in late fall. Ironically, I had been in Florida a few weeks ago for Thanksgiving but had not even dreamed of seeing this bird then.

Driving south, we passed small, coastal towns including Biddeford and Kennebunk that had become familiar to me during the last few months, especially because I’d made friends who lived there. A few miles south of Biddeford, we hung a left, and the Atlantic Ocean soon came into view. So, too, did a large number of cars and people wearing binoculars and cameras walking along a single road bordered by a rocky breakwater. We parked, then headed toward the commotion. Almost immediately, someone pointed a small bird out to us several dozen meters away. It was actively flycatching and landing on the rocks, stopping periodically to admire the large crowd that had gathered to watch it. The flycatcher was slate gray, with a dark, raccoon-like mask and a hefty, Eastern Kingbird-esque bill. It was definitely a Gray Kingbird!

Maine is the last place I expected to nab my lifer Gray Kingbird—a bird that shouldn’t have been within 1,500 miles of Maine!

As Miles and I watched the flycatcher sally back and forth across the breakwater, a lady approached us.

“Hey, I know that it’s not the star of the show, but there’s a Snowy Owl on that roof over there.”

I looked up, and sure enough, spotted a large white ball perched on a chimney several hundred meters behind the Gray Kingbird. “No way! I wonder if anyone has ever had Gray Kingbird and Snowy Owl on the same list before today?” I said to Miles as he began scoping the ocean for sea ducks.

It wasn’t the Snowy Owl we’d set out to find, but we’d take it!

“I doubt it…got some Black Scoters though!”

Soon enough we’d picked up all three scoter species (my second time doing that in a day in Maine and my first time doing it in one spot) and Long-tailed Duck. After snapping photos of both the kingbird and the owl, which were both incredibly cooperative, and scanning a large gull flock for anything interesting, we headed out. We probably should have turned around to begin the long drive north again, but instead we continued south to investigate a report of a Black-headed Gull in the town of York, half an hour away. We pulled up at a large sandy beach—a rare sight in Maine—and immediately picked out several flocks of gulls standing beside the rolling tide. Sure enough, I soon observed a dainty gull with bright red legs, a red bill and a dusky ear spot hiding among the larger Ring-billed and Herring Gulls. Black-headed Gull was a lifer for Miles and an ABA lifer for me, and we watched it loiter on the beach as its American counterpart, a Bonaparte’s Gull, dove into the surf behind it.

Can you find the Black-headed Gull here?

Hungry for more, we drove to a nearby lighthouse to check for Purple Sandpipers and Harlequin Ducks. No sandpipers showed themselves but Miles quickly found two groups of mostly male Harlequins hugging the rocky coastline. It was really cool to see these in their wintering habitat as compared to the fast-flowing streams I’d usually seen them in in Glacier National Park.

Not the best photo, but this was the first time I’d ever seen Harlequin Ducks outside of Montana!

We decided to head back towards Orono, briefly stopping to look for a Clay-colored Sparrow in a cemetery in Portland to no avail. Miles dropped me back at UMaine at around 5 pm, and we made sure to exchange information about birding Maine and Oregon. In fact, Miles will be back in Oregon when my family heads over there for Christmas, so you may see his name pop up on another blog in the near future! It had been an epic, rarity-filled day, and I went to bed dreaming of owls on rooftops and flycatchers by the sea.