A Day at Fort De Soto

Fort De Soto is Da Bomb! Or a bomb, depending on when you go.

It is a truth widely acknowledged among Florida birders that the single best thing a person can do during spring migration is head to Fort De Soto County Park , where warblers and tropical vagrants drip from the trees like blooming flowers, their little beaks dripping with the sweet purple juice of the plentiful mulberries that grow all over the park. Fort De Soto during migration is Da Bomb. No, not just Da Bomb. More like Hiroshima and Nagasaki and every bomb past, present, and future combined.

"OH..MY..GOD!" an acquaintance gasped orgasmically when recalling last spring's Alachua Audubon trip there. Her eyelids fluttered and her hand trembled as it passed over her rapidly beating heart. "It... was...AMAZING! ! We had TWENTY-FIVE species of warblers! And there were thrushes EVERYWHERE!"

"One year I saw THREE cuckoo species in the same tree! At the same time!" another friend recalled dreamily."

"I can't believe you didn't go last year! YOU HAVE TO GO!" exhorted another friend.

So we went. And since the trip started at 8 a.m. and Fort De Soto is about 150 miles south of us, we got up at 4 a.m., pumped ourselves up with caffeine, and set off for our super-fantabulous day of warbler-watching.

And at about 7:30, we found ourselves in a stunningly beautiful park buffeted by what felt like 30 mph wind gusts. Not good. And a St. Pete birder helping organize his Audubon chapter's field trip told us that things had been unusually quiet for the past few days.

For this we got at at 4 a.m. and drove nearly three hours??

No matter. Our hardy band of Gainesville birders assembled just before 8 and pressed on. (As did several other Audubon groups, who had all planned to be here at the height of migration.) We started at the still-quiet beach, where we got a nice inventory of shorebirds, including Piping Plovers and American Oystercatchers. The latter were strangely unafraid of people.

Just as I had feared, we ended up seeing more birders than actual birds at all the famous hotspots in the park. The vaunted mulberry trees were waving violently in the wind, with only a few unusually persistent Cedar Waxwings clinging to their branches. Near North Beach, Glenn got his life sightings of a Rose-breasted Grosbeak and a Veery. An Indigo Bunting made a brief appearance, as did a female Black-throated Green Warbler. A male American Redstart lingered in the area for most of the day:

But the best bird we saw was this one:

We all agreed this guy was clearly a Black-and-white Warbler; he was feeding and moving exactly like every other Black-and-white I've ever seen. Was that strange head pattern a form of melanism? Or was he a crossbreed? Did he any idea he was a crazy-looking freak of a bird?

Our merry band of birders slogged through the wind and nearly birdless silence of the woods until around 5:00, stopping only for a brief lunch break. We chatted about birds, food, plants, and past trips to Fort De Soto that were SO, SO much better. In the company of fun people in a pretty place, the absence of interesting birds didn't really matter all that much. It was still a good time.

We'll definitely be back—after all, it can only get better!

(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday Winter Warblers

Black-and-white Warbler, Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park.

Yellow-rumped Warbler, Morningside Nature Center, Gainesville.

Palm Warbler, Morningside Nature Center, Gainesville.

Eat It Up

Bon Appetit!

Small birds lead grueling lives: from the moment they pop out into the world as fertilized eggs, they are in risk of turning into someone else's lunch. When they're not worrying about getting eaten themselves, they are either migrating, mating (or engaged in stressful mating-related activities such as fighting for territory or fighting off potential competitors)—or eating.

A knowledgeable source told me that warblers typically eat their weight in insects every day. I haven't gotten around to independently confirming this, but if it's anywhere near true, the only people who should ever be told to "eat like a bird" are sumo wrestlers. And maybe this guy.

During migration, appetites increase as birds fuel up for consecutive all-nighters of flight to the Southern Hemisphere. Last spring, a flock of Chipping Sparrows ate their little way through a 4-cup-capacity feeder-full of seed at my place every day for about three weeks before taking off for points north. Their company was getting quite expensive.

Now the birds are heading back south and some have deigned to stop in Gainesville. Not too many of these, however, have deigned to allow themselves to be seen by me this weekend. One of the more cooperative ones was this Black-and-white Warbler, grabbing one of many juicy snacks by the Bolen Bluff Trail in Paynes Prairie State Park:

This Red-eyed Vireo wasn't eating at the moment, but most likely, he or she was thinking about it. How do I know this? Hey, this is the internet—it has to be true!

Every Bird Counts

A White Ibis at the idyllic Home Depot Pond.

Every September, two momentous events hit Gainesville on the same day: the infamous Florida-Tennessee hate match , and the county-wide Fall Migration Count. Of course, I completely ignored the former and got completely sucked into the latter.

I'd never done a bird count before; back in OC, I had the impression that the only people who did these were the Really Good Birders, and that my participation would be more of a hindrance than a help. But out here, the birding community is small and tight, and it's almost impossible to bird alone: if you hit any hotspot wearing binoculars, you will meet people, and these people will no doubt know every other local birder you've ever run into.

And if you met any of these people two weeks ago, you'd get drafted onto one of the count teams. And it was made clear that my utter ignorance about local bird life was no excuse not to participate.

Our team of 8 birders started out at 6:30 am. At Kanapaha Prairie, a private tract of farmland and and homes, we watched flocks of Sandhill Cranes and Wood Storks fly overhead as the sun rose, and caught a few Eastern Meadowlarks hopping around on fence posts.

At Chapman Pond, a pretty little holding basin owned by the local utility company, we saw Tricolored Herons, Snowy Egrets, Common Moorhens, and both White and Glossy Ibises. The Glossies were new birds for me, but they look so much like White-faced Ibises, they really seemed familiar. (This shot's for you, Corey!)



During the drive to our next spot, Kanapaha Botanical Garden, we looked for birds from the car. This netted me another lifer, a White-winged Dove. The botanical garden was gorgeous—filled with lots of twisty little stone-paved trails leading to romantic little gazebos and cozy benches tucked beside ponds and waterfalls. An utterly perfect place for a first kiss—or any kiss, for that matter.

Alas, it wasn't that great for birds. The goal of the count was to track fall migrants, but we didn't get very many. After a couple of hours of getting nothing more interesting than a single Ovenbird and handful of American Redstarts, we took a much-needed lunch break.

Our afternoon went much like our morning—great conversation and scenery, but not a lot of birds. But it was fun for me to see some new birding spots I'd only heard about. One was yet another little pond, stuck between a freeway overpass and a shopping center. At the evocatively named Home Depot Pond, we saw a huge flock of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, as well as the most motley assortment of Mallard/Muscovy hybrids ever.

One of our last stops was at Laurel Hill Cemetery, in the nearby town of Archer. I learned that one year, someone doing the count claimed that a ghost had followed her home from the cemetery and assaulted her. Maybe THAT'S why they were trying so hard to recruit new people this year!

Again, we didn't get any warblers other than a couple of Northern Parulas. (On the upside, we didn't encounter any evil spirits either.) But I did get my third lifer of the day, a Red-headed Woodpecker—since it was raining while we were there, I didn't take out my camera, so alas, no photos!

Ironically, while yesterday was a nearly warbler-free day, today the warblers were flitting about in force. At Palm Point, I got Ovenbirds, a female Hooded Warbler (another lifer for me), a Yellow and Yellow-throated Warbler, several American Redstarts, a Northern Parula, and a couple of Black-and-White Warblers:


I have no idea which way his head is facing, either.

I ran into another birder there (who, of course, did the count yesterday with another team, whose team members I also knew); he managed to see a Blue-winged Warbler, which I unfortunately missed. Maybe next time!

The other fun birds I got today were a group of very active Pileated Woodpeckers, drumming away loudly in the treetops:



Someone once said that character is what you do when no one is looking. And perhaps the character of a place is the number of birds out when nobody is counting.