Back from Florida!

[semillama]

I'll be posting pics and trip reports on my blog this week, but here's a brief summary:

-7 days of birding, hit Merritt Island, the area around St. Cloud and Lake Wales, Miami, Everglades, Florida Keys, Dry Tortugas, St. Pete, and Hernando Beach.

-154 total species, including 36 life birds and 10 ABA-area birds.

-Life Birds:
Black-bellied Whistling Duck
Muscovy Duck
Mottled Duck
Audubon's Shearwater
Masked Booby
Brown Booby
Red-footed Booby
Least Bittern
Reddish Egret
White Ibis
Roseate Spoonbill
Swallow-tailed Kite
Snail Kite
Short-tailed Hawk
Crested Caracara
Clapper Rail
Limpkin
Snowy Plover
Wilson's Plover
Brown Noddy
Black Noddy
Bridled Tern
Roseate Tern
Black Skimmer
White-crowned Pigeon
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Budgerigar
Monk Parakeet
Black-Hooded Parakeet (on Florida list, headed for ABA list)
Burrowing Owl
Antillean Nighthawk
Smooth-billed Ani
Florida Scrub-Jay
Red-whiskered Bulbul
Common Mynah (just added to the ABA list)
Bachman's Sparrow
Spot-breasted Oriole

ABA-area birds:
Magnificent Frigatebird
American Oystercatcher
Royal Tern
White-winged Dove
Common Ground-Dove
Mangrove Cuckoo
Gray Kingbird
Black-whiskered Vireo
Cave Swallow
Shiny Cowbird

[semillama]

1. Here's the link to my blog post on Day 1 of the trip:

http://semipalmatedllama.blogspot.com/

And a picture of a White Ibis:

[Gato Moteado]

11. great blog....i was wondering what the black hooded parakeet was....

...we call those nanday conures. there are boatloads of them breeding all over the miami area. when i lived in miami we saw them all the time.

there's a small park near UM where a lot of different parrots, including some macaws, would come to roost at night.

when i worked near the airport i once saw a hornbill in a tree near the entrance to my office building. it was right after hurricane andrew and surely was an escapee from the metro zoo.

[XemaSab]

2. Where did you get Short-tailed Hawk?

That was the big miss for my trip last year.

And while you're at it, where did you get the MACU? I wouldn't consider that a major miss, but we looked for it and dipped. :P

Sounds like a really epic trip. You hit any milestones? :shrug:

[semillama]

4. Here's where we got those birds

The Short-tailed Hawk we had just south of Lake Wales - I believe the exact location is mentioned in Bill Pranty's guide, but I'm not quite sure of where we were exactly, just that it was south of Lake Wales and near Lake Arbuckle.

Here's the bird, btw:



The Mangrove Cuckoos: we had one fly over our heads at West Lake, and it also started calling, too. We had another on Key Largo at the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park. Didn't get any photos of that bird!

[XemaSab]

7. The Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park

If it's the same place I'm thinking of, it was one of the best spots of the trip. We heard a MACU call once, but sadly, that was all we got.

Did you go in the back where the apartments are? :shrug:

[elleng]

3. Great work!

I'm still in Florida, but doing old-folks stuff instead of fun stuff. BUT . . . .

I did find, in garbage can in library of 'retirement' community where folks are staying, copy of an early edition of AUDUBON!!!!

(so now I'm a 'trash-can' lady! but libraries only!)

[Maestro]

5. Wow.

That is one heck of a great trip. I don't even recognize the names of some of those birds. What is a budgerigar?

[semillama]

6. You know them as "Budgies"

The dimestore parakeet. There's a wild breeding population in Hernando Beach that is on the ABA list. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up extirpated though, I guess they are in decline.

I've got days 1 through 4 up on my blog now, with more pics: http://semipalmatedllama.blogspot.com/

[Maestro]

8. Thanks for the clarification.

I am checking out your blog now.

[Theres-a]

9. Did the cuckoos "cuckoo?"

Just curious.

[semillama]

10. Nope. That's the "original" european Cuckoo who does that

The Yellow-Billed sounds like: "kow-kow-kow-kow-kowlp-kowlp-kowlp".