Birding South Florida

Florida plays a big role in any Big Year strategy. There are three elements to its importance. First, because of its geography it serves as a bottleneck for bird migration along the Atlantic Flyway. Second, it hosts numerous wind-blown vagrants from the Bahamas and Cuba. Third, an extraordinary number of exotic species have become naturalized and count towards official ABA list totals. A much greater number are counted in eBird list totals. I began my Florida adventure with 623 Big Year species (571 observed in the ABA Area), accompanied by Cliff Hendrick and Irene Fortune, two familiar Quetzal Tours customers from Colorado. Both had already participated in my Biggest Year project, Irene in South Texas, Cliff in Puerto Rico. I arrived a couple hours earlier than they on the afternoon of May 6, 2023. After renting a vehicle I picked them up at Miami’s International Airport at 5 PM. With only a few hours of daylight left, we decided to track down one of South Florida’s introduced species, Spot-breasted Oriole. Using eBird and BirdsEye apps on our cell phones, we located a promising hotspot in the suburb of Kendall, Westwood Lakes Park, where a pair was nesting. At 6 PM on a Saturday, the park was bustling with people picnicking and observing youth sporting events.  Muscovy Duck, another Florida exotic that has become countable, and a pair of Gray Kingbird were new for my ABA Area list in eBird. The exotic Oriole evaded us. We found a Cuban hangout in nearby Homestead for dinner. The waitress claimed she had seen me before. Maybe my twin brother Oliver had eaten there once. We spent our first night at the Floridian Hotel in Homestead. 

May 7

Our first birding stop on Sunday morning was a few minutes from our hotel at Portofino Plaza. A thriving colony of Caribbean Cave Swallow that was nesting under a highway overpass was worthy of study. The cinema parking lot here was studded with ornamental trees that were attractive for a variety of transient and resident birds. Here I added a migrating Blackpoll Warbler (624) and an introduced Common Myna (625). Then, in the agricultural fields adjacent to Homestead Airport, I added Short-tailed Hawk (626), Bobolink (627) and Palm Warbler (628), all while tracking down a staked out Smooth-billed Ani. Special thanks to Jesse Fagan, a pro tour guide  who pointed the Ani out to us as well as his group.  Cliff and I had seen this species earlier this year in Puerto Rico, where it is much more common. The next stop was about 20 miles east where another staked-out rarity lurked near the visitor center of Biscayne Bay National Park. This was the La Sagra’s Flycatcher, a vagrant from the Bahamas.  This diminutive nondescript passerine preferred to keep to itself in the midday heat. We did enjoy the search and appreciated good views of Black-throated Blue Warbler and Swallow-tailed Kite. After lunch, we headed south across the Bay of Biscayne to Key Largo where we encountered a good flock of migrant warblers as well as biting mosquitoes. We ended the birding day on Coconut Key where we relocated several Antillean Nighthawk (629) that had been reported foraging over the mangroves near the Marathon Airport, a traditional location for this Caribbean species, at dusk. It is virtually identical to Common Nighthawk, but easily distinguished by vocalizations. Both species were present. I uploaded audio to my eBird checklist here: https://ebird.org/checklist/S136566204.

The Antillean Nighthawk song sounds like a bleating sheep with 3-5 notes. The Common Nighthawk sounds similar but issues only a single note. We overnighted across the street in a quaint beach motel called the Siesta Motel. 

May 8

After an hour drive from Marathon, we arrived at the Ferry terminal on Key West and boarded the Yankee Freedom which would take us almost 3 hrs out to sea further west past a chain of uninhabited mosquito-infested isles known as the Marquesas Keys to a cluster of tiny atolls - the Dry Tortugas. Once a military outpost, it is now a National Park. We docked at Garden Key which is just large enough to host the decaying brick walls of Fort Jefferson. Just prior to arrival the boat paused at Hospital Key, a dry sandbar that hosted a small colony of breeding Masked Booby (630) and an even smaller number of Brown Booby. At Garden Key, the shoreline and sky was dominated by thousands of Sooty Tern (631) nesting among the small bushes that lined the beach. Hundreds of Brown Noddy (632) were also nesting among them. We spotted 4 Bridled Tern (633) and 2 Black Noddy (634) among them. All these birds are special because they are almost never seen on the mainland. A Magnificent Frigatebird colony in some dead trees on a nearby atoll completed the scene. 

Aside from the nesting seabirds, the sparse trees and shrubs inside the hexagonal walls of the fort attract dozens of passerine migrants. National Park personnel had set a water drip next to trees in the walled-in courtyard of the old fortress. As the sun reached its zenith the air temperature was about 80F. Birds were coming into the drip to drink water. About a week earlier when Jesse Fagan visited with his Field Guides tour, he spotted and identified a Tricolored Munia at the drip. This exotic finch from India had been wind-blown from its adopted home in Cuba making it an ABA-countable species. A small flock on the Florida mainland near Lake Okeechobee are not yet countable by ABA standards. Since this was the only Tricolored Munia that I could get for my Big Year, I wanted it badly. We made a plan to check the drip hourly during our three-hour stay on Garden Key. I spent most of my time on the atoll searching the vegetation in the courtyard for the Munia. The search yielded numerous other species-Scarlet Tanager, Wood Thrush, Swainson’s Thrush, Cape May Warbler, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Palm Warbler, American Redstart, Indigo Bunting, Eastern Wood-Pewee, etc. But no munia. It was getting late and the ferry would be departing soon, so we went up to the top of the fort’s outer wall for a better view of the tern colony in order to find the two Black Noddy. With the noddies were a small number of Roseate Tern (635). A Quebecois birder named Alain Sylvain met us up there and said he and his wife had just been watching the Tricolored Munia at the drip. Aargh. We returned to the drip but the Munia had disappeared again. I waited at the drip until the last call for the ferry forced me to abandon my position. This was a big miss for my Big Year effort.  

Upon returning to Key West at 6 PM, we explored the best known birding spot there for the final two hours of daylight-Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park. A vagrant Red-legged Honeycreeper had been spotted here a few days earlier. It was very birdy. In addition to free-ranging Red Junglefowl nearby, we observed many migrants in the park including a dozen species of warbler. A late Yellow-rumped Warbler and a Blue Grosbeak were flagged as rare by eBird. We headed home to the Siesta Motel in Marathon stopping along the route for a satisfying dinner at a roadhouse called Bahama Mama’s. 

May 9

 

Wednesday morning, we slowly birded our way back east through the Florida Keys. The birding was excellent but no new year birds. A close encounter with an Eastern Screech-owl was memorable. Back on the mainland we heard the news that a Fork-tailed Flycatcher - a mega rarity- had been discovered this morning at Fort Zachary Taylor on Key West. We had birded there til dark the night before! We pondered going back but decided instead to make a concerted effort to refind the La Sagra’s Flycatcher near Homestead. After two hours we gave up. An unexpected surprise was a close encounter with a family of Manatee in the canal along our trail. 

We ended the day at a city park in Kendall called Pine Woods Park. We had received a tip from a birder we met at the Dry Tortugas that we could find both Red-whiskered Bulbul and Spot-breasted Oriole here, two exotics on our target list. We arrived a few minutes before sunset. A soft slurred whistle caught my attention. I had heard this call first at Murray Park in San Diego County. I had heard it again at White Oak Park in the Houston suburbs. Scaly-breasted Munia! Cliff and Irene were thrilled to see one of their targets. Moving slowly through the park - really just a strip of green space in a residential neighborhood- we eventually stumbled upon a bulbul carrying food. It posed for us to take photos, probably hesitant to visit its nest with us watching. I had seen these gorgeous birds, originally from India, in Los Angeles at the Botanic Gardens. We moved on looking for the Oriole, without success. 

May 10

On Thursday morning, we drove north from the Floridian Hotel to the Tamiami Trail where Snail Kite had been reported recently. Several hours of searching a 30-mile stretch of canals in Everglades National Park was productive but not for our target species. I seemed to be going through a target species slump. So we turned to the guru of south Florida, the Dalai Lama of Florida exotic bird species. We needed professional assistance from the most distinguished birding guide in South Florida — Larry Manfredi. Larry had helped John Vanderpoel during his successful ABA Continental Big Year in 2011 and John had let him know I’d be contacting him. Larry had agreed to spend one afternoon/evening with us because during the week he worked the morning shift as a wildlife observer at a Army Corps of Engineers construction site.  It was no coincidence that a La Sagra’s Flycatcher turned up here where Larry could encounter it while working. He has probably seen more La Sagra’s Flycatcher in Florida than any other  birder. 

Larry invited us first to sit down in his backyard. His feeders were popular with all three Cowbird species in Florida: Bronzed, Brown-headed and Shiny, and we quickly spied all three. Next we visited Dolphin Mall in Sweetwater for a drive-up Gray-headed Swamphen (636). He then took us to a colony of Red-masked Parakeet at the Biltmore Hotel and Golf Course in Coral Gables. A Yellow-chevroned Parakeet flew by. Egyptian Goose made an appearance. The Baptist Hospital hosted a colony of Mitred Parakeet (637), the largest of the Aratinga-genus parakeets. We then returned to Westwind Lake Park in Kendall which was again crowded with people. Larry spotted the Spot-breasted Oriole (638) for us. After dining with Larry, Cliff and I drove twenty minutes to the entrance station for Everglades National Park. Several Chuck-wills-widow were singing from all directions around the Visitor’s Center. 

May 11. 

We began our birding day at sunrise at the canoe launch area of Black Point Marina near Biscayne National Park visitor center, acting on a tip from Larry Manfredi that this was a reliable spot to find Mangrove Cuckoo. We played one call on my phone and voila!  One called back immediately from right in front of us. It posed briefly for a photo and promptly disappeared. This was a target species for Irene. Cliff and I had one in Puerto Rico but being able to count it for our ABA Area lists was satisfying. 

We had arranged to meet Larry at 7 AM at his worksite nearby so that he could show us the La Sagra’s Flycatcher. Another out-of-state birder met us as well. Mike Perkins of upstate New York was also looking for the flycatcher. To our chagrin, the flycatcher was missing in action. This was our third strike looking for this small Myiarchus  flycatcher from the Bahamas. 

We headed north through Miami towards Cape Canaveral, a four-hour drive, to look for the overwintering Bahama Mockingbird. En route we picked an area to buy supplies in Palm Beach County where Nanday Parakeet had been recently reported in eBird. Bingo. Before we could get back on the highway I spotted a few Nanday Parakeet (639) perched on a wire. We pulled over for better looks and discovered a nest hole in an ornamental palm in the roadway median strip. Then, we looked for a location along our route where the endemic Florida Scrub-Jay was likely. The Helen and Allan Cruickshank Sanctuary in Indian River County fulfilled our criteria nicely. Within a few minutes of parking our car we were greeted by three Florida Scrub-Jay (640).  We arrived at Jetty Park on Merritt Island in Brevard County and found the Bahama Mockingbird (641) without difficulty singing in the campground picnic area. We turned back south and drove until dinner time. We stopped to dine and sleep our final Florida night in Vero Beach West. 

May 12 

We arrived at Lake Okeechobee around 7 AM and spent the entire morning exploring the area. We were searching for a few final targets and eventually found two of them at the south end of the giant lake. At Belle Glade marina and Torry Island we observed a half dozen Limpkin which are odd waders that appear to be a cross between a rail and a heron. They feed almost exclusively on Apple Snail. So it wasn’t too surprising that a Snail Kite (642) sailed by us, as it too favors this delicacy. It flew by just in the nick of time as we had started moving towards the car to drive the final leg to Miami for our return flight to Colorado. 

I really enjoyed this trip. Irene and Cliff were great travel companions. 

I added 19 new Biggest Year species towards my goal of 900 species in the USA and territories. I also added more than 30 species to my ABA Area and Lower 48 year lists, which kept me high on the leaderboard for those two categories which are tracked in eBird.org. I ended this trip with 602 species in the Lower 48, in third place behind my friends David and Tammy McQuade with 607 species each.