Lifers, Specialties, and Rarities – South Florida

Friend Ed Hagen planned and organized our week-long trip around southeast Florida and the Florida Keys out to Dry Tortugas National Park.  Not much new likely for Ed, but I had a potential lifer list of 27 and a potential new photo list of 58.  I ended up with 18 lifers, including eight eBird rarities as well as a few exotics, and 28 new photos.  We had a total of 127 species and Ed even added a  bird to his USA list.  A most satisfying and enjoyable trip.

Fort Jefferson -Dry Tortugas National Park

Inauspiciously, our first stop out of the airport Tuesday morning yielded zero of the White-winged Parakeets and Common Mynas that are known to hang around a nearby bank building.  We stopped at the bank days later to see about 30 White-winged Parakeets bust out of a palm tree nesting site first thing in the morning.  And we found Mynas later in their natural habitat, picking crumbs in a Circle K parking lot:

Common Myna (Acridotheres tristis)

We were soon on our way to a menagerie of waders and waterbirds at the Wakodahatchee Wetlands, including a life first, the Gray-headed Swamphen, an introduced but now established exotic:

Gray-headed Swamphen (Porphyrio porphyrio)

Hard not to get distracted by the photo opportunities afforded by nesting herons, Anhingas, and Wood Storks:

Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga) 

But we had a rarities to chase.  So off to the Lantana Preserve a bit up the coast where all we had to do was step out of the car to hear a Bahama Mockingbird.  We found it with a bit of looking and were able to get some other birding groups on it quickly:

Bahama Mockingbird (Mimus gundlachii)

We ended the day chasing a very rare bird, a Key West Quail Dove, but futilely.  We crashed at a real flea bag of a motel just down the road so we could try again the next day and missed it for the second time by a matter of minutes.  This is a secretive bird, prone to sitting still on the forest floor or walking slowly through leaves. It was being seen at several spots in the area and it was disappearing into several spots in the area.  We were not the only frustrated birders but we got some redemption with a nice look at a Mangrove Cuckoo at Black Point Park and Marina a little down the coast:

Mangrove Cuckoo (Coccyzus minor)

I calculated this to be my 600th lower 48 life bird and somewhere around my 400th lower 48 bird species photo.

Mangrove Cuckoos are most similar to Yellow-billed Cuckoo, but show a darker face mask, buffy underparts, and no rufous in the primaries.  Comparative photos of all three eastern US cuckoos may be seen here: C.S.WoodPhotos-Cuckoos

We had a schedule so after a third day spent mostly waiting on the quail-dove, we moved on hoping it would stay around for a later attempt.  Down to the Keys.  A couple of photo stops collected Gray Kingbird:

Gray Kingbird (Tyrannus dominicensis)

And a Reddish Egret:

Reddish Egret (Egretta rufescens)

Along the way we were treated to views of the famous railroad bridges built by Henry Flagler (fascinating story “Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean” by Lee Standiford).

Old Bahia Honda Bridge

We stopped to look at a herd of the famous Key Deer on the way to Key West, then next morning out to Dry Tortugas National Park by ferry.  Nice ride, but relatively birdless until reaching the Dry Tortugas islands.  Three Brown Boobies sat among about 90 Masked Boobies on Hospital Key:  

Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster) with Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra)

The fort’s courtyard and the bushes outside the walls were pretty busy with migrants, including good looks at Black-whiskered Vireo:

Black-whiskered Vireo (Vireo altiloquus)

Very similar to Red-eyed Vireo, the Black-whiskered Vireo is best identified by its namesake field characteristic, although the "whiskers" can be hard to see.  We had almost side-by-side comparison:

Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus)

A fly-over Peregrine Falcon stirred up the crowd:

Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus)

Which included a nice mix of ten different warbler species:

Hooded Warbler (Setophaga citrina)

We spent some time studying noddies, looking for a reported Black Noddy without success:

Brown Noddy (Anous stolidus)

But we returned the next day, fortuitously meeting with two other birders, one with a Swarovski 95mm scope which helped them pick out a Black Noddy among the thousands of Brown Noddies.  Not the most satisfying of looks, and no photo op, but convincing field ID characteristics. Photos of seemingly tame Bridled Terns satisfied the photographer’s itch:

Bridled Tern (Onychoprion anaethetus)

Bridled Terns differ only slightly from Sooty Terns; the most obvious difference in the field being a paler shade of black overall and mostly white tail feathers on the Bridled compared to the really black back and mostly black tail of the Sooty.  

Sooty Tern (Onychoprion fuscatus)

Bridled Tern (Onychoprion anaethetus)

Leaving the marina after returning to Key West, a newly arriving pair of White-crowned Pigeons cooperatively landed on a tree next to the road, allowing Ed to swerve onto the grass and me to jump out and get photos:

White-crowned Pigeon (Patagioenas leucocephala)

Next day we returned north with a quick stop to feed the mosquitos at Flamingo in the Everglades, where we were not lucky with Shiny Cowbird, but did spot a sought-after lifer for Ed (and me), an American Crocodile:

American Crocodile (Crocodylus acutus)

We decided to give the Key West Quail-Dove one more chance to add us to its life list and, amazingly, this time it took only 10 minutes of looking for Ed to eyeball it under the gumbo limbo tree.  This was an Ed highlight, as it was an ABA area bird for him:

Key West Quail-Dove (Geotrygon chrysia)

It was also pretty difficult to photograph.

With the time bonus the quail-dove luck gave us, we shot inland to the Sim-Chi Rice Mill and nailed a Shiny Cowbird out the car window, but it disappeared into a storage bin full of something edible.  Yellow-headed Blackbirds, an eBird rarity at this time and place apparently, were a bonus trip bird:

Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus)

Last day had us focused on Spot-breasted Oriole, which we missed at a few places, and missed again at our first stop that morning.  But then we heard of a La Sagra’s Flycatcher located at Spanish River State Park, where coincidentally we had previously missed the oriole.  Figuring this was a good way to end the trip, we spent 4 hours searching with several other birders, one of whom turned up the Spot-breasted Oriole along the way:

Spot-breasted Oriole (Icterus pectoralis)

This birder, it turns out, was fantastic, but she warned us that the flycatcher would be life bird number 800 for her, so we may be hexed.  And it appeared that way, when time came to leave for the airport with no La Sagra’s.  Held up by a drawbridge just outside the park, then stopping for gas nearby, we were slow getting away - thankfully!  The fantastic birder called me (number exchange a mandatory rare bird search tool) to say she had just found the flycatcher.  Dropping the gas hose and calling Ed back from the store, we tore back to the park and in 15 minutes or so all seven of us were on the bird:

La Sagra's Flycatcher (Myiarchus sagrae)

Happy Birders

A serendipitous end to a week of hard birding. 

More photos may be seen here:  C.S. Wood Photos - Florida 2019 

All photos © C.S. Wood