Florida Birding 2020

Dickson Smith <dicksonsmith58@gmail.com>	12:19 AM (8 hours ago)
to UBIRD

I went and spent 3 weeks, Feb. 25 to 17 of March, in the West Palm Beach, Florida area staying at my daughters. Got to do a lot of birding with a total species list of 133 birds seen with four lifers. Lifers where Short-tailed Hawk seen in the Everglades, Blue-headed Vireo, Cape-May Warbler and a Pacific Golden Plover, which was a 1st for the state of Florida.  I have a buddy, who is a birding guide, who took me out to find a lot of the birds I got to see and put me onto the plover and vireo. For anyone interested in birding in Florida and would want to higher a guide, I would highly recommend him, Carl Edwards, Peregrine Birding & Nature Tours, 561-248-5497 or neotrop@comcast.net. He has lived there all his life, very, very knowledgeable, knows the area and the birds to be seen. Tell him I recommend him.

I'm not going to post all the species I saw unless you would like to know, then just make a comment and I will. One of the birds I really wanted to see and photograph again was the Crested Caracara. I have seen them and photographed them before but it was always in the rain. This time I lucked out and accidentally located a nesting pair and their active nest. I was able to get some great shots of the male carrying food back to the nest. The Vireos were a big challenge to photograph as they do not sit still for any length of time and love to stay hidden. Same as the Cape-May Warbler, couldn't get a photograph of it. I had photographed the Florida Scrub Jay on previous trips but lost all my photos while down loading them onto my computer. So I went after them again at Jonathan Dickson State Park. Wow, talk about a easy time to photograph a bird. The jays are very habituated to people and even had one land on my hand. Same with a JV Heermann's Gull on one of the beaches. It didn't land on my hand but did come down and land on the sand about two feet away from me. I wasn't expecting that and it was quite a shock to me and my daughter. Had many of the gull species I saw and photographed sitting on the beach and where so use to people waking by all I had to do was walk up near them sit down and start photographing. Had a nice group of Black Skimmers that gave me the same opportunity.

Along with the birds seen there where a couple of creatures I wanted to find and photography, Manatees and the American Crocodile. By taking the trip to Flamingo in the Everglades Nation Park I was able to see both. Unfortunately the American Flamingos which can be seen there at certain times of the year were not to be found. The crocodile is a resident at Flamingo, has a name, Jerry, and is 14 feet long.

I'm not going to try an post all the photos I took in this email but will post more at future dates. I took close to 2000, so enjoy!