Everglades, Big Cypress, Corkscrew Swamp, Ding Darling

So, you didn't honestly think we would go to Florida and not do any birding, did you?! I hope not.

In fact, Andy and I got three whole days of birding to ourselves. That is the absolute beauty of vacationing at the grandparents' place! We left Islamorada before dawn one morning and headed for the northern everglades, or Shark Valley as it is known, an area neither of us has explored before. Access into this part of the glades isn't very extensive...other than the option of donning your hip waders and bushwhacking through the sawgrass prairie, there is only one 15 mile loop road. And you can't drive your own car on it- there are hourly Park Service trams that do the loop with a guide to tell you what you're seeing. Nice for some, but not really our thing. The problem with those trams is that just as you hone your binoculars in on something excellent, like a limpkin or a baby anhinga, the tram pulls away with the guide saying something about how you should never try to pet a crocodile. Grrr.... Lucky for us, you can bike the Shark Valley loop road. And, my parents have two cruiser bikes with fat tires and cushy seats, perfect for the flat terrain.

A 50-s era observation tower stands at the loop road 1/2 way point. It's out of place if you ask me, but the elevation gives you a better idea of what the terrain looks like.

Black vulture "waiting" for us on the loop road

So that first morning we biked around Shark Valley. Like everywhere in the glades, it's a surreal landscape. Oceans of sawgrass, with the occasional watering hole filled with wading birds, and islands of cypress and other tropical plants rising out of the flat grass here and there. We saw some great birds, but also tons of gators (one female with a young brood) and beautiful scenery. The bikes were perfect; we could cruise along at a good pace, but stop as long as we wanted to take in anything interesting. A wonderful morning well spent.

Baby gators are adorable. Later that day, we saw a male gator catch and eat a baby gator. Nature red in tooth and claw. I had to look away after the first few bites.

Airboats are a third option for seeing the everglades, but they are pretty noisy so I can't imagine we'd sneak up on too much avifauna.

Mad fat northern mockingbird. It was cold (for FL) so I think he was just conserving heat.

Blue-gray gnatcatcher (this one's actually at Bahia Honda, but we saw them in Shark Valley too)

Our ultimate destination for the night was Sanibel Island, so we headed further west along the Tamiami Trail and drove a detour road into Big Cypress National Preserve. This area is in the middle of the Miccosuckee Indian reservation, so there are little neighborhoods plopped down (or built up) in the middle of the cypress swamp. There weren't many birds in this area, that we could see from our drive, so we decided to head north to Corkscew Swamp Sanctuary in Imokalee, FL.

Big Cypress Preserve. They look dead but these are live baldcypress trees- they lose their needles in winter.

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary was beautiful and very birdy. We slew one of our long-time white whales, the Painted Bunting, when we saw both a male and a female at some feeders the sanctuary has set up. We also got into some mixed warbler flocks and got excellent views of yellow-throated warblers, blue-headed verio, black-and-white warbler, and pine warbler.

Yellow-throated warbler.

About the only cypress needles we saw...

OMG! An Ivory Billed Woodpecker!! Ha ha.

We spent a relaxing night at Sanibel Island, complete with fancy dinner to celebrate the end of our first day of birding, and woke up the next morning ready for Ding Darling. Probably the goofiest named wildlife refuge in the NWR program, Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge is another one of those places where access is limited through the use of a ring road, or "wildlife drive." When we woke up that morning, it was 38 degrees out. The TV newscaster warned Floridians "not to go outside if you don't absolutely HAVE to!" and rolled off the locations of several emergency shelters they had set up around the county. Eh?!!?! I mean, come ON people, 38 degrees isn't even below freezing! It had warmed up to 45 by the time we hit Ding Darling, but I think the birds were a bit sluggish waking up with the chill.

Ding Darling NWR on Sanibel Island

Mudflats at Ding Darling

The problem with mudflats is they attract shorebirds, which are an identification challenge at the best of times. And if you couldn't bring your big silver spotting scope because it's way too heavy, doesn't fit in a carry on, and looks a little like a grenade launcher, then you're really out of luck. We always end up cursing ourselves for attempting great shorebird locations without our spotting scope, and Ding Darling was no exception. We were able to pick out Ruddy Turnstones, Black Bellied Plovers, Semipalmated Plovers and Least Sandpipers since they were the close ones, but the mass of shorebirds scurrying way out on the mudflats remained a mystery. We did get amazing looks at another lifer for us on this trip, the Short-Tailed Hawk.

Sanderlings and a Piping Plover (probably hard to see at this resolution but the plover is banded)

Short-Tailed Hawk

Green Heron

After Ding-Darling, we headed north to the Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management Area, one of the best places in the country to see the endangered Red-Cockaded Woodpecker. It takes these woodpeckers nearly 3 years to excavate a nest hole so that they can breed in it, even with the help of a juvenile from a previous brood -- as Andy says, no wonder they are endangered! The ABA Guidebook for FL says that the best place to find them is near their nest holes near dawn or dusk, otherwise they would be foraging about in mixed "feeding flocks" with other woodpeckers, bluebirds, nuthatches and warblers. Since it was about noon when we arrived, we set about looking for these flocks. We did find many flocks, including an especially cruel one that contained a Downy Woodpecker (looks almost exactly like a Red-Cockaded, so we were all excited for a moment) but no Red-Cockaded. The habitat was so striking and interesting (a dry pineland with towering slash pines, and only grasses and low palmettos as an understory) that it was worth the trip sans woodpecker. And I saw a lifer, the Brown-Headed Nuthatch (Andy already had it).

Dry pineland of Babcock-Webb WMA

One of the Red-Cockaded nest holes- Their nest trees are marked by researchers with white paint at the base of each tree.

Our final day of birding was back in Everglades National Park, where we had decided to go on a guided birding walk hosted by the Tropical Audubon Society. Group birding is a catch-22 - sometimes it's beautiful because you get to see places you don't know about, or the extra pairs of eyes help in spotting something you wouldn't have seen otherwise. But other times it can be really annoying if there are major know-it-alls or the size of the group is actually impeding the number of birds you might see. This group was fairly large (about 20, at least) and S-L-O-W. We started at 7:30AM and by noon we had barely left the Coe Visitor Center at the entrance to the park. So Andy and I bid our appreciative farewells to the group at lunch and went back to birding at our usual pace.

Tropical Audbon group scanning agricultural fields near the park entrance.

Great Blue Heron

Gator

A highlight of our time with the Audubon group was an American Bittern at the marsh near the visitor center.

Baby anhingas on the Anhinga Trail



Stalking Green Heron

Little Blue Heron

Adult Anhinga

Epiphytes

Tree Roots...not sure what kind. Fig, maybe?

Mangrove Skipper

Gray Hairstreak

Florida White

Zebra Longwing

We also saw many interesting butterflies, which are easier to photograph than birds! The most unusual bird on our day of birding in the Everglades, though, was a roosting Whip-Poor-Will just above our heads on a palm frond. A couple walking on the boardwalk at Mahogany Hammock told us they thought they saw an owl above...when we looked, it was clearly not an owl, and Andy said, "Actually, that's a goatsucker!" Silence. I don't know if they were disappointed or just confused, but Andy showed them the nightjars in our Sibley Guide and we ID'd it as a Whip-Poor-Will. Not a life bird, but still very cool to actually see instead of hear!

Roosting Whip-Poor-Will