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 . . .
This is Braden’s second installment of his epic Florida adventure with our recent guest blogger, Nick Ramsey. In six days, the daring duo hoped to bird the entire length of Florida from N’Orleans to Key West and back—and see 200 species of birds in the process. Day 2 began well when all of a sudden, they were beset by an equipment malfunction. Would they push on? What about the mosquitoes? Read on to find out—and, as usual, please share this saga, which we hope will soon become a major Hollywood movie called “The Big Tear”.
A buzzy rising song, marked by short, evenly-spaced notes, echoed from a nearby mangrove. “Northern Parula?” I asked Nick as he walked up with his dog Dixie by his side.
“Prairie Warbler!” he said, holding up his phone to record the song and then playing it back at the bird. Sure enough, a bright yellow male, complete with eye stripes like a football player, hopped into view, singing its heart out as I snapped dozens of photos. We were at the Lighthouse Point Park and Jetty in New Smyrna Beach, approaching the Atlantic Ocean, a different body of water than the day before. Common Ground Doves called from the mangroves around us, and early-morning beachgoers strolled past as we scanned the dunes for Gopher Tortoises and Wilson’s Plovers. Our primary target this morning was a well-known bird of the Atlantic, although not one that was supposed to be this far south: Purple Sandpiper. I’d recently seen my United States lifer on a rocky shore in the Maine winter, and yet one had been reported consistently from this subtropical beach. Soon enough, we located the jetty where the bird had to be, passing a large flock of roosting Royal Terns with a ratty-looking Black Skimmer in their midst. Ruddy Turnstones wandered the beach and Forster’s Terns plunge-dived around us as we walked out on the rocks, scanning for a small, gray shorebird with a slightly curved bill. Right near the end, Nick shouted “I’ve got it!” and sure enough, there it was, acting exactly like every other “jetty bird” I’d ever seen: tame and fearless. With Purple Sandpiper and a Florida sunrise under our belts, we headed back to the car and our next destination: Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.
This may be the most co-operative Prairie Warbler ever!
Merritt Island is well-known for its birds, but the island itself is more famous for something else. To the south of the refuge stand the tall, white towers of Cape Canaveral, the site of numerous rocket launches, positioned so that, in case of emergency, the rockets can be safely brought down into the ocean without harming anyone. I was more interested in the Florida scrub habitat of the wildlife refuge, however. Lone pines sprouted dozens of feet above the sea of palms and brambles, and Tree Swallows and Purple Martins flew overhead as we pulled into the parking lot of the Pine Flatwoods Trail. As soon as we got out of the car, we were met by Nick’s grandmother and her boyfriend Bud, whose cabin we had slept at the night before in New Smyrna Beach. I’d heard countless stories of the adventures Nick and his grandma had had, so it was great to finally meet her.
Purple Sandpipers look almost identical to the West Coast’s Rock Sandpipers. Don’t believe me? Watch our video!
The three of us began walking, with Bud staying behind to watch the car. As we did so, Nick’s grandma handed me a flyer starring a dark blue corvid with a long tail and a mischievous expression—our major target for this outing. The flyer informed me that Florida Scrub-Jays occurred only in roughly 51 locations across the state, threatened by habitat loss from the clearing of Florida scrub habitat. As Florida’s only endemic bird species—and one that is Federally Endangered—the scrub-jay’s remaining habitats would fortunately remain undeveloped for the foreseeable future. In no time, Nick pointed out the call of a scrub-jay, and we began scanning the brush intently. Suddenly, I spotted several long-tailed silhouettes flying in the distance. As they grew closer, their plumage matched the color of the blue sky above.
“There they are!” I yelled, and the three of us raised our binoculars to watch them alight on a nearby bush. Several more scrub-jays called from behind us, gradually increasing our total count to eleven, and given their conservation status, it was heartening to see so many of them.
Florida Scrub-Jay is a species I’d been wanting to see since I started birding eight years ago. To see so many was a real treat.
We high-fived, then headed back to the car to drive to our next spot. As we pulled out of the empty parking lot, however, Nick slammed on the brakes, pointing forward.
“Swallow-tailed Kite, incoming!”
We’d been watching the skies all of yesterday and today looking for this neotropical migrant, a species with a population of only several thousand in the United States. I jumped out of the car, armed with my camera as two of the most beautiful birds I’d ever seen soared several feet above us, their white-and black plumage shimmering in the rising heat. They circled for a few moments, allowing me to snap some decent photos, then resumed their journey, long tails flowing behind them. The birds reminded me of oddly-proportioned, differently-colored Barn Swallows, which is indeed how they had gotten their name. My dad and I had seen this species while zip-lining through the cloud forest of Ecuador, but it had been five years since then and this was a much better look. As I got back into the car, Nick smiled. “They never give looks that good! Did you see their backs??? It’s impossible to see their backs!!”
Though I’d seen Swallow-tailed Kites in Ecuador, nothing compared to the view we got on this morning!
We spent most of the rest of the day at Merritt Island, driving loops and investigating the visitor center. Just like at St. Marks, the ducks that the refuge was famous for weren’t here in large numbers, though we did find one flock of American Wigeon and Northern Shoveler. However, White and Glossy Ibises, the three egrets, Little Blue, Green and Tricolored Herons, and Roseate Spoonbills put on spectacular shows, feeding in almost every habitat from lawns to roadside ditches to marshy lagoons. Many of the birds were in breeding plumage, sporting fun plumes and colors that I’d never seen before. These plumes were the exact feature that had led to the birds’ downfall a century earlier. Snowy and Great Egrets especially had gorgeous white feathers reminiscent of wedding dresses trailing from their wings that had attracted the lady’s hat industry in the nineteenth century. Millions of birds were slaughtered during this time, and the two species disappeared from much of their range. However, with the beginning of a conservation movement in the early twentieth century, these birds soon began to recover, once again becoming common across the southern United States.
Anyone who gets bored with Roseate Spoonbills has lived too long—or should go bowling!
Immediately after seeing the scrub-jays and kites, we drove to a small path overlooking a large lagoon. Manatees surfaced and at the visitor center Nick found two White Peacock butterflies, beautiful white insects with intricate orange details on their wings. And while looking for a previously-reported Eurasian Wigeon at the edge of the refuge, we came across a Prickly Pear Cactus fruiting! We both tried one of the magenta fruits after brushing off the spines, and they weren’t half bad!
It’s hard for a mammal to compete with birds, but manatees come pretty close!
When we got back in the car, Nick began rolling up the windows when we heard a click, followed by one of our back windows falling down into the door, its mechanism broken. Deciding to deal with the problem later, we taped a large yellow towel to the window with Nick’s emergency supply of duct tape, then followed Nick’s grandmother to a nearby Thai restaurant where she bought us a tasty lunch. We said our farewells to her, then drove to an Ace Hardware to look for solutions to our window problem. Eventually, we came up with a makeshift window of plastic wrap and duct tape, which Nick carefully applied while I fed Dixie and a daring, dog-food-snatching Boat-tailed Grackle. Back on the highway, we headed south towards our last spot for the day as a light rain started, testing Nick’s makeshift window. The plastic held, despite making loud smacking sounds, and we pulled into a shady-looking restaurant on the side of the highway called Doc’s Bait House. A Black-headed Gull, another northeastern vagrant, had been hanging out at this strange place, and we hoped to add it to Nick’s life list.
It wasn’t perfect, but Nick’s window-repair job would get us through the rest of the trip!
Unfortunately, as we walked around in the light rain and the setting sun’s light, no Black-headed Gull showed. The birds were active, though—Lesser Black-backed Gulls, Brown Pelicans, Forster’s Terns and other common coastal birds circled the harbor in impressive numbers, and a Wood Stork flew right over us on its way to its roost. It was a great way to end the birding part of day two, as Nick put another layer of plastic over the window and we headed south towards the outskirts of Miami. A long night lay ahead of us and little did we know that our birding luck was about to run out.
From Sneed: Following our Accidental Big Year last year, Braden has set out to really smash his Big Year record of 335 birds in 2022, with a goal of at least 400 species. He and I got a great start in Montana on New Year’s Day, but that was nothing compared to the trip he just took with our recent guest blogger, Nick Ramsey. As soon as Spring Break began, he flew to New Orleans where Nick picked him up and they embarked on a break-neck marathon birding expedition the length of the state of Florida. Here is Braden’s first installment of this epic adventure.
I awoke at dawn, no more than five hours after I’d fallen asleep in the passenger seat of Nick Ramsey’s gray-gold Honda Pilot named Betsy, parked on a sandy road surrounded by Longleaf Pines in Apalachicola, Florida. Nick was already outside, overturning logs and branches in search of herps—reptiles and amphibians—and he greeted me as I climbed out of the car, as did his dog Dixie, a mutt the size of an obese squirrel, who marked my jeans with the first muddy smears of the trip.
“We’re not that far from the pin,” said Nick, his binoculars and camera slung across one shoulder. “If we just walk along this road and then bushwhack a little, it should be pretty easy to find.”
We set off along the sandy road, and birds I hadn’t seen or heard in years belted out melodies: Pine Warblers, Northern Parulas, Carolina Wrens and Tufted Titmice. While this trip’s main goal was to seek out birds, it doubled as a general nature expedition, and right now we were on the hunt for salamanders. Following directions Nick’s friend had sent him, we walked through oaks and pines until coming across a small seep in the forest. Nick immediately stepped into the water, his sneakers sinking up to his shins, and began overturning logs.
“I got one!” he soon shouted, shoving his hand into the muck and pulling out a small, dark gray amphibian. It was the threatened Apalachicola Dusky Salamander, a creature whose range was almost entirely confined to this small part of Florida and a nearby part of Georgia. This had been Nick’s main amphibian target of the day, meaning that we’d already achieved one of many goals we had talked about for the trip.
Although our expedition was bird-focused, that didn’t mean we could ignore other great Florida flora and fauna—including endangered Dusky Salamanders!
Birdwise, I’d compiled a list of about a dozen or so species that I wanted to see while I was down here. For this Pineywoods section of the state, my main targets were Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Bachman’s Sparrow and Brown-headed Nuthatch, a bird that had eluded me several times already. Unfortunately, while the area surrounding the salamanders’ habitat was indeed filled with Longleaf Pine—which all three of these species needed—there were neither mature-enough trees nor grassy-enough ground for any of them. Further south, though, we hoped to see the endemic Florida Scrub-Jay, as well as Snail Kites and Limpkins, two species well-known for their dependence on apple snails. White-crowned Pigeon was a goal in the Florida Keys, as was my number one target for the trip: the notoriously difficult Mangrove Cuckoo. I also wanted good looks at Burrowing Owls and Sandhill Cranes while, as a veteran Florida birder, Nick’s goals oriented more towards Miami exotic species, specifically White-winged Parakeet, Red-whiskered Bulbul and Spot-breasted Oriole. Besides this, we just hoped to see as many birds as possible—and we’d already made a good start.
After picking me up from the New Orleans airport the day before, Nick had driven us to the largest, ugliest lake in Louisiana in search of a Brown Booby someone had reported on Facebook just minutes earlier. Lake Pontchartrain had all of the color and none of the appeal of chocolate milk, stretching out of view so that it looked just like the Gulf of Mexico. The Brown Booby, a species that lived in the Gulf, had thought so too, and we’d found the bird surrounded with Brown Pelicans and Double-crested Cormorants perched on some sort of piping running into the water. After this early success, we had gone to a bar where I tried Cajun food for the first time. All I can say is that, if there were boudin balls in Maine, I would never eat another dining hall meal again.
This uncommon Brown Booby on Lake Ponchatrain kicked off our epic adventure in style.
After spending our first of many nights in Nick’s car in Apalachicola, we woke to the Dusky Salamanders, and also discovered a Southern Toad under a small log. Then we drove to our next pin, a pull-off on the side of the highway where we were rewarded with pitcher plants, sundews, and introduced Venus flytraps. The rest of the day we devoted to birding. As we cruised the entrance road to St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, Nick called out the songs of White-eyed Vireos, which sounded like those of the Cassin’s I knew quite well mixed with random “chuck” calls, as they emanated from the forest. We pulled into the Visitor Center Parking Lot, finding ourselves in classic old-growth Longleaf forest. Here, large patches of palmetto and young pines stuck out from the scrubby understory, and Nick immediately began overturning dead fronds to look for Pygmy Rattlesnakes. The young Longleaf Pines looked just like tall, extra-green tufts of grass, a really strange feature unique to this conifer.
White-eyed Vireos would provide a new and pleasant serenade for me on many parts of our adventure.
With few birds at the Visitor Center, we drove to Helipad Landing. Red-cockaded Woodpeckers had been reported here, and a large field of brambles served as a wintering site for Henslow’s Sparrows, LeConte’s Sparrows, and sometimes, Yellow Rails. In true Nick Ramsey fashion, Nick set off across the field in hopes of flushing one of these species while I stayed on the road with Dixie. Again, we didn’t find much.
“Don’t worry,” said Nick as we walked back to the car, “Wait until we reach the ponds. We’ll see so many birds that we won’t know what to do with them.”
Always-impressive Anhingas would keep us company for much of our trip to the Keys and back.
As we rounded a corner towards one of the ponds, however, we were met with an unexpected sight: save for a few Pied-billed Grebes, the water was almost completely deserted. We saw not a single duck, much less the huge wintering flocks St. Marks was known for. Apparently, this year was not the first year that winter waterfowl numbers had been low in Northern Florida. Climate change had rendered conditions more suitable for ducks to winter further north, and thus, the ducks had no need to continue their southward migration. We did spot a few more birds that I hadn’t seen for years at this spot, called the Stoney Bayou, including Anhingas, Little Blue Herons and a Boat-tailed Grackle, but felt a bit disappointed. Thankfully, as we continued to drive things began to pick up.
Nick abruptly stopped the car as we were driving around a pond. “I can’t tell if that’s the call of a Prairie Warbler or a Hooded Warbler. Do you wanna get out and look for it?”
I did, camera-ready, given that Prairie Warbler would be a lifer while Hooded would be flagged for the area. An Eastern Phoebe sat on a snag underneath an Anhinga sunning itself, and I scanned the bushes behind them for yellow birds that might be skulking there.
“Oh crap, it’s both!” shouted Nick from the car behind me.
I hadn’t seen a Hooded Warbler since my Dad and I did our Big Year in 2016.
Sure enough, a bright male Prairie Warbler hopped into view above the phoebe—my first lifer of the trip! And below it, a beautiful male Hooded Warbler hopped onto a log floating in the water, chasing insects around as it dodged and wove between overhanging branches.
The birds continued to multiply as the road reached the ocean at a place called Lighthouse Pond, and we walked around it, tallying waders and seabirds as they flew over our heads. St. Marks was well-known as the wintering site for a single American Flamingo, and we spotted it way out in the bay with its head tucked into its feathers, resembling a pink lollipop sticking out of the ocean. At Lighthouse Pond I also spotted our first American Alligator, floating suspiciously near a Tricolored Heron, and I decided that I would keep a running tally of these cool critters. Back at the Visitor Center, we ran into a mixed flock of warblers, gnatcatchers and vireos foraging in the pines above us. There I spotted my lifer Yellow-throated Warbler alongside parulas and Black-and-White Warblers, and Nick pointed out our first target bird of the trip, a Brown-headed Nuthatch squeaking as it climbed up a nearby tree.
Two for lunch? I hope these waders (Tricolored & Little Blue Heron) know what they’re doing.
At the Panacea Unit of the Wildlife Refuge, known for its old-growth pine forest and extensive saltmarsh, we struck out on Red-cockaded Woodpecker and Bachman’s Sparrow, arriving at the saltmarsh just as the sun began to set. We did spot three Wood Storks, and heard were the raucous calls of Clapper Rails, both species I’d never observed before! Soon enough, Nick waded out into the marsh, flushing up both Seaside and Nelson’s Sparrows for brief looks. An American Bittern lifted out of the marsh as the light grew gray, and we feasted on celebratory sandwiches as we drove through the night towards the Atlantic Coast of Florida, where we’d be crashing at Nick’s grandmother’s vacation home. Despite it not being a particularly lucky day, we’d observed almost 100 species at St. Marks alone, setting a great tone for the rest of the trip. However, we had no idea what was to come in the next five days as we planned to traverse the entire length of Florida and back.
Brown-headed Nuthatches were a lifer for me—and far from the last for this trip!
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If you’ve been a loyal fan of FatherSonBirding, you probably know about Braden’s and my 2016 Big Year in which we saw 337 species in the American Birding Association (ABA) region in a calendar year. Since then, we have never set out to topple that record even though, with our vastly improved birding skills and knowledge, it would be a relatively easy thing to do. In fact, a couple of times we have come perilously close without really trying thanks to trips to Texas, California, and in Braden’s case, a band trip to Hawaii. When I received two invitations to Texas for this fall, however, I thought to myself “You know, maybe it’s time to give this a shot.”
Mind you, it was still a long shot. When I left for The Hummerbird Celebration in September I had managed to scrape together only about 260 species in Montana, Idaho, and Washington for the year, and knew I’d have to go BIG that first trip to Texas. I did, scoring about fifty Year Birds—but still left myself more than 20 birds short in perhaps the toughest time of year to bird. “Still,” I thought, “if I can somehow get ten or twelve more species on my second Texas trip, I might get within striking distance.”
I knew I would need help.
I’ll take a blurry Lifer any day—including this beautiful Brown-headed Nuthatch. By the way, this bird brought my ABA Life List to 498 birds! Only two hours later, I got number 499, Monk Parakeet! What will be 500?
My trip last week unfolded when I was invited to give a keynote address at Houston Audubon’s (HAS) annual Avian Affair fundraising gala (more on that in my next post). As you probably know I love HAS and was honored to accept, but I brazenly asked my hosts if there was a chance anyone could take me birding when I arrived. Before I knew it, a team of expert birders, all HAS board members, had been assembled with the express goal of helping me tackle my Texas “needs” list! In fact, within twenty minutes of my arrival, Bill Matthews picked me up at the airport and whisked me off to our first stop, the W.G. Jones State Forest—home to some of the state’s most accessible Red-cockaded Woodpeckers.
To be honest, I didn’t think we’d find the RCWOs since they can forage over a large area, but I was also hoping for a Life Bird, Brown-headed Nuthatch. As we began walking around the forest, we found no woodpeckers near their roosting trees, so decided to take a longer walk down a trail. Very little stirred, leaving me feeling that maybe we wouldn’t see much—until, that is, we had walked about half a mile. Then, all of a sudden, Eastern Bluebirds were flying everywhere. Other Year Birds soon surrounded us—Carolina Chickadees, a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Tufted Titmice, Pine Warblers, and oh joy, Brown-headed Nuthatches!
Though Braden and I had seen Monk Parakeets in Israel before the pandemic, this was my first ABA Monk Parakeet. Bill Matthews mentioned that the severe freeze in Texas earlier in the year had pared down the parakeets’ numbers significantly.
We left without RCWOs, but I was elated with our finds. Bill hadn’t finished with me, though, as we stopped by a roosting Eastern Screech-Owl in a neighborhood nesting box and two Monk Parakeets behind his wife’s studio. By this time, Bill’s fellow board member and well-known bird guide Glenn Olsen joined us, so after the parakeets, we adjourned to Molina’s Cantina for some great Tex-Mex food and to plan our next day’s conquests. Unfortunately, the next day proved a lot tougher than the first, but we still were able to hear a Limpkin—a rare visitor to Texas—at Sheldon Lake, and see some incredibly cool Brown Boobies on a “tower of power” at Baytown Nature Center, accompanied by yet another great birder and HAS board member, Skip Almoney.
World’s Most Cooperative Owl? This Eastern Screech just may take the prize!
With a total of 8 Year Birds, I was fairly satisfied as I actually did some work the following day, speaking to fifth-graders at Western Academy—and saw Year Bird #9, Scaly-breasted Munias! Glenn Olsen was not satisfied, however, so on my last morning, he picked me up early before my flight and we headed back out to W.G. Jones, meeting up with another great HAS board member, Eric Mayer, out at the site. Again, I didn’t think we’d see the woodpeckers and we didn’t. After an hour, in fact, it was time to head back to the car so Glenn could take me to the airport. As we approached the parking area, though, Glenn shouted, “Woodpecker!” I got my binoculars on a black-and-white bird landing on a pine tree and guess what? Red-cockaded Woodpecker! It was a great way to finish up a great trip, and left me with a flock of wonderful new friends—and only 11 birds to break my record. Will I make it? Good question. While in Texas, I missed four or five migrating rarities in Montana and it appears they have left the state. I will keep up my quest, however, so stay tuned!
I was a doubter, but this Red-cockaded Woodpecker really wanted me to break my Big Year record!
