Round Up The Usual Suspects

Not a rarity around here, but Bittern nothing.

The weekend started with a series of missed appointments: someone from Alachua Audubon was supposed to drop by my place on Friday to pick up stuff for their upcoming silent auction, and there was supposed to be a field trip to La Chua on Saturday morning. But late on Friday, my Audubon contact called to say she was delayed at work; could we meet up at the La Chua trip instead?

This sounded perfect—but on Saturday morning, I woke up to the pounding of rain on the roof. Like an idiot, I got up anyhow, mindful to put on a pair of semi-water-resistant boots instead of my regular hiking shoes, and headed for La Chua. It was still raining when I got there. And it was still raining 20 minutes later, when the trip leader (the only other person who showed up) made the obvious decision to call the thing off.

But my Audubon contact called me an hour later, and I got the stuff to her later that morning. And on Sunday morning, I made my way back to La Chua, alone.

I had really been looking forward to the field trip because the leader was a crackerjack birder, the kind of guy who can instantly ID a sparrow or warbler from a single distant call note—so I knew I'd see a lot more with his guidance than I would alone. And I suspect I was right: My goal for Sunday was to scare up some good wintering sparrows. But I heard and saw nothing but Savannahs and a few Eastern Towhees. The prairie was weirdly quiet, devoid of both bird song and people.

But as a consolation prize for a morning of mediocre birding, the common year-round residents were unusually bold and cooperative. Great Blue Herons seemed to cross my path on the trail every few minutes, some standing only feet away. One of them calmly strolled past me, ambled into a nearby swampy area, and helped himself to some breakfast:

Further down the trail, I was startled to see a Red-shouldered Hawk perched quietly on a snag just off the trail. The bird didn't seem at all perturbed when I stopped to look at him:

Bald Eagles and Northern Harriers swooped by regularly, and I saw a couple of American Kestrels, a bird I don't recall seeing before at that spot. From the observation deck at the end of the trail I could see the wintering Sandhill Cranes in the distance. The water was filled with American Coots, Common Moorhens, and most likely, several species of wintering ducks. But from where I was, the distant water birds were impossible to ID; without a scope, this was as close as I could get:

Some of the most interesting drama was on the platform itself. For the past few weeks, I've been overhearing visitors scratching their heads over the possible back story behind this:

Cooperative birds and an interesting mystery; there are worse ways to spend a quiet Sunday morning.

Best. Spring Break. Ever. (Part 3)

Everything looks better at the Viera Wetlands.

Spring break in Florida doesn't necessarily mean endless frozen Daquiris and sleeping till noon.

Or so I discovered two Fridays ago, when my alarm clock clanged to life at 4:45 a.m. in our hotel room in Titusville. I somehow made it out of bed, got my contact lenses in and struggled to figure out how to work the incredibly cheesy little coffee maker in our room. But this was all going to be worthwhile, because we headed to the Viera Wetlands, where we were going to meet up at 6:30 with one of Glenn's friend and fellow photographer Harry for a day of birding and shooting.

The Viera Wetlands, about a 40 minute drive south of Merritt Island, was another one of Glenn's grail sites. Like the San Joaquin Marsh back in southern California, Viera is a system of filtration ponds owned by the local water district that just happens to attract a large number of wading birds. Both sites are beloved by nature photographers, both for the rich variety of birds present and by the relative ease with which they can be viewed: visitors at both sites travel along elevated dikes separating the ponds, which allow unobstructed views of bird activity only feet away. At sunrise—when we arrived—it was clear why this place was so popular: even ordinary birds looked spectacular.

Harry lived close by, and had been scoping the place out for us in the preceding days. There was a lot of nesting activity, he reported, but unfortunately, he hadn't seen any Limpkins, one of the birds we told him we wanted to find there. But only minutes after arriving, we saw what we thought to be a Glossy Ibis obscured in the reeds at the edge of one of the ponds. Then it moved into the open...

Yay! This guy must have arrived after Harry's last inspection—or somehow managed to slip under his radar. Over the course of the day, we'd see several more Limpkins. They're not flashy birds, but unusual and fun to watch—and our third lifer of the trip.

As Harry promised, there was tons of nesting activity. The ponds were filled with the tall trunks of dead trees, and each of these seemed to contain a heron's or egret's nest. We got good looks at a nesting male Anhinga watching after his two chicks:

The chicks were clearly hungry, and were constantly pecking at their father and craning their necks for food. But Dad was either unwilling or unable to feed them. We waited a while for Mom to return—hopefully, with a belly full of food for sharing—but after half an hour it was still just Dad and the kids. So we moved on.

The other creatures that appeared in large numbers were photographers, all bearing cameras with very large lenses. Harry seemed to know all of them, and Glenn recognized several of them from the online forums he participates in:

It's not the size, it's what you do with it.

We explored the ponds from 6:30 until noon, returned to Harry's place and ordered a pizza for lunch, then returned for some afternoon shooting.

By 5:30, the sun was sinking and a new crop of sunset photographers and birders was arriving. But we were exhausted and suffering from sensory overload: our Limpkins had gone into hiding, but we discovered that Least Bitterns were lurking in just about every thick clump of reeds. We also spotted two Caracaras (a lifer for Glenn), an armadillo, and a large raptor we couldn't identify.

We had squeezed just about every possible bird, every possible neat thing out of those ponds in our one long day there. Not since crossing the finish line of my one-and-only marathon (so far) have I felt so good being completely wiped out.

A Day at the Beach

A Forster's Tern enjoying a little snack.

Spring migration gave me a serious case of bird greed. I was desperate to catch every warbler and flycatcher I could before the summer lull set in. Thus, I've been spending nearly every waking weekend hour for the past six weeks or so out in the field with my bins and high hopes...

Until the weekend before last, when I didn't get to bird at all: instead, I was stuck indoors at a conference my department was sponsoring. Yes, it was a prestigious international conference, and the talks were all original and interesting...but there really ought to be a law against scheduling these things during spring migration.

Then a few days later, the report from Orange County Rare Bird Alerts officially declared the summer doldrums in session. And I had spent the last precious moments of migration season eating cold bagels and sitting through PowerPoint presentations.

So on Saturday, we decided to check out the Least Terns at the reserve at Huntington State Beach instead of looking for (now-non-existent) migrants. They were there in large numbers, and had already started nesting and incubating their eggs.


We also birded the Talbert Marsh and Banning Ranch areas just up the Santa Ana River. In the palm trees in the industrial complex just inland from Talbert Marsh, we found a colony of nesting Great Blue Herons: there were about half a dozen nesting pairs setting up house in the treetops.


Beautiful as they are, these master hunters can definitely cause some trouble for the nearby nesting Least Terns.

In the marsh itself, we saw several pairs of Elegant Terns mating (a process that seems to go on forever—the male Elegant Tern is the Ron Jeremy of birds). On the other side of the river, in the Banning Ranch area, we got a brief glimpse of a Clapper Rail. In the river was a late-lingering male Bufflehead: we found out the next day that it had been captured and taken to the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center. I suspect that this was because he had ended up on the beach, and not just because he was too dim to migrate. Poor little dude!

We ended up spending the entire day at the beach: we got there about 9, and left about 6. And even then, we only left because it was starting to get seriously cold.

Spring might be over, but summer is off to a good start.