The Unbearable Cuteness of Being

Oooh! Cute!

Spring migration has been a bust. My little corner of Florida has been blessed with calm, sunny weather for the past month, which is great for people and birds -- but not for people who want to look at birds. As one of my more knowledgeable birding pals told me, migrating birds want to get to their breeding grounds fast, and if the weather is clear, they're not going to stop. And in my area, not that many migrating birds have seen a need to stop.

Last week, Glenn and I went on Alachua Audubon's annual pilgrimage to Fort DeSoto, and scored a couple of Cape May, Black-throated Blue, and Blackpoll Warblers -- but no other migrants. Last night, a powerful thunderstorm hit Gainesville, and as I lay in bed watching the lightning flash across the sky, I wondered how many migrants might have chosen to spend the night in town rather than fly through the storm.

The answer: not many. A quick early-morning trip to Bolen Bluff revealed a single migrant warbler -- a male American Redstart -- and dozens and dozens of squirrels. Oh boy.

Still, the transition from winter to spring still shows itself in the changing inventory of birds. Local summer breeders such as Summer Tanagers and Blue Grosbeaks have started showing up, and rumor has it the Purple Gallinules have arrived on Paynes Prairie, just in time for breeding season. I haven't seen one locally yet this season, but on a trip south about a month ago, we got to see a particularly pretty one at the Orlando Wetlands, where they occur year round:

Luckily, when there's nothing else to look at during the hot season, there are always babies. Like the one above. He/she was one of four we saw peeping and sort-of walking in the underbrush at Lettuce Lake Park, in Tampa. Holy cow. Cutest. Thing. Ever. Times four.

All of us who watched the little family were enthralled. We figured the babies must be really young, given there were still so many of them (and there were a large number of hungry alligators nearby). We marvelled at how different they looked from their parents. The little puffballs made me wonder if there's some kind of universal template for all precocial chicks, and at some point in their fuzzy little lives a program goes off to turn the little things into chickens, or Mallards, or whatever.

I certainly wouldn't have been able to tell whose babies these were had the parents not been nearby: we heard them calling loudly and flying low over the lake all afternoon. One was always with the babies, never more than a foot or two away.

It still amazes me that in only a matter of months, those tiny little balls of fluff will turn into this:

Not just any old babies, but Limpkin babies -- a vulnerable Florida specialty. To see four of them being so well cared for was just as good as seeing some random migrant just passing through.

The Snottiest Grackle in the World

Boat-tailed Grackles are boringly common out here, so despite being big and noisy, they're easy to ignore when you're looking for more exotic birds.

But not this guy. He and his cohorts were strutting snootily around the Viera Wetlands last weekend as if they owned the place—which I supposed they do. I loved how he marched about with his shoulders pushed back and his chest pushed forward, with a nearly military bearing, all while puffing up the feathers on his head like some kind of tribal headpiece. He and the other male Boat-taileds seemed to be involved in an ongoing pissing match, with each noisily attempting to chase off the others.

I'm pretty sure this was all springtime hormones at work: While their men postured and posed, the duller female Boat-taileds darted through the reeds bearing nesting materials.

The guys take charge of the grand gestures, while the girls do all the heavy lifting. The lives of Boat-tailed Grackles look distressingly familiar.

The Boat-taileds weren't the only birds showing off at the wetlands. We travelled to Viera because one of Glenn's friends had told him that Limpkins were nesting here. But when we arrived, his friend had bad news: An alligator had paid a visit to the nest the night before.

The alligator had managed to take a nest full of eggs just days from hatching—but fortunately, he didn't get any of the adults. And the adult Limpkins we saw were bold and noisy; the unfortunate events of the preceding day didn't seem to slow them down. This Limpkin seemed to follow us from pond to pond, almost as though he wanted our attention. At times, he or she was almost too close to photograph:

The Limpkins were a treat since they don't occur (anymore) in Gainesville—at least not on a regular basis. We also had fun looking for the more elusive and sneaky birds, such as Marsh Wrens and Least Bitterns. We managed to find several Least Bitterns on their rare forays out into the open: our first sightings of this bird this year:

The wetlands looked and felt different—and the birds acted differently—than on our last visit, on New Year's Day. Then, it was foggy and quiet except for a few other hard-core birders determined to start their year lists with the visiting Masked Duck.

That's a cool thing about the best birding places: they're never really the same place twice.

The Last and the First

Since my teaching schedule gives me a week off between Christmas and New Year's Day, Glenn and I have developed a tradition of a New Year's road trip: when we were back in California, this generally involved a getaway to a cute (and potentially birdy) spot such as Santa Barbara or Monterey, and a stay in a comfy B&B.

This year, we spent New Year's Eve in the company of the world's largest palmetto bug ("palmetto bug" being a polite Florida regionalism for what other American English speakers call a BIG-ASS COCKROACH); said bug was promenading calmly across the wall behind the beds in our somewhat down-at-the-heels motel. Glenn caught it in a plastic ice bucket and flushed it down the toilet.

Then, as we watched that sparkly ball drop over Times Square, we toasted each other with big bottle of the excellent Arrogant Bastard Ale and marveled that for the first time, we were actually watching the ball drop live, rather than on three-hour tape delay viewed from the West Coast.

And we were exactly where we wanted to be. Our digs were about as romantic as the DMV, but we were just moments away from some of the best birding in Florida: Merritt Island National Wildlife Sanctuary. We had visited the reserve for the first time last spring, loved it, and were curious to see what birds we could find in the winter.

On New Year's Eve, we stopped by the Visitor's Center at the reserve, and, as on our last visit, immediately spotted Painted Buntings on the feeder behind the volunteer greeter's desk. Two males and a greenie were hopping in and out, looking as tame as House Sparrows. But our cameras were in the car, Glenn wanted to look for eastern shorebirds, and we just figured they would be there when we came back later.

They weren't. (A resolution for the New Year; Take advantage of every opportunity as it comes; it may not come again.) But our shorebird hunting at Canaveral National Seashore, located inside the reserve, gave us a gorgeous morning at the beach and my final lifer of 2009: a Northern Gannet:

The Gannets were seemingly everywhere: every few seconds, a flock of a dozen of them would appear in the north, flying south just beyond the surf line. Occasionally, one would dive for a fish. This was a bird I'd never seen before, and wasn't expecting to see, and now there were hundreds of them. A wonderful way to end a year of good birds.

On New Year's day, we woke up reasonably early and set out to the Viera Wetlands, a well-known birding and bird-photography hotspot about 30 miles south of Titusville. Weather reports the previous evening had warned of heavy rain for New Year's day, but it was still (sort of) dry at the wetlands when we got there. And we immediately found ourselves in the company of several hard-core birders eager to get a jump start on their 2010 year lists: my first bird of 2010 was a Loggerhead Shrike, and my second an American Kestrel. Not too shabby.

The other birders soon pointed out the main reason we were there: a male Masked Duck, who had been lingering there for the past few days. It was hiding in a cluster of pickerel weed when we arrived, but was soon chased out into open water by a territorial Common Moorhen. We all agreed we owed one to that Moorhen:

As we admired the Masked Duck, the rain started to come down—but not before we managed to get and photograph another local specialty, a Limpkin:

The rain continued to come down, now in big cold sheets. But it was still a good New Year's day. We ended the old year and started the new with some darned good birds. I hope this bodes well for everything else in the new year.

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.