The Last Ani

Our longest-standing birding "white whale" was slain last week in the Everglades. After more than a decade of earnest searching in any known hide-out or reported location, Andy and I finally saw a Smooth-Billed Ani. Mind you, this is a small, plain black bird, about the same size as a blackbird or a grackle, with its only outstanding feature being a rather heavy black beak... so you're probably wondering what the fuss was about. I don't know that I can explain it either. It's just that it had eluded us for so many years, and we deliberately went out of our way so many times in hopes of finding it, after so-and-so birder geek reported one here or such-and-such guide book said there was good habitat there. Even this time, we had to go to the same spot on the Anhinga Trail on 3 separate days before it showed itself. And then all of a sudden, there it was, calmly preening like it was no big thing after all.

The Ani

The sad part is that Anis really are declining rapidly in Florida. They are a very gregarious and social bird, and in the caribbean where they are common, they travel around in large nomadic flocks. Ten years ago my mom saw a fairly large flock in Coral Gables (Miami) but nothing like that has been reported on the birding listservs for years. This particular Ani we saw has been at Anhinga Trail pretty regularly for the last year, and he's always been alone. Not a happy life for a social species. So although I will say he looked rather content the morning we saw him, he's likely one of the last of his kind in Florida.

On a happier note, we also saw many other cool birds in the Everglades and Keys on our trip- enjoy these photos Andy took!

Purple Gallinule

Anhinga drying its wings

A fritillary of some sort

Brown Pelicans

Pelican in mangroves

American Bittern

Great Egret

Heron on Cypress Tree


Limpkin


Great Egret

Great Egret fishing

Keys Perfection

This year's excursion to visit my parents in the Keys was our best Florida trip ever. So far, anyway! The weather was absolutely gorgeous - sunny, upper 70s, and light breezes pretty much all week. And when you have weather like that, it's amazing how many fun activities you can fit into 6 whole days. We went stone crabbing, fishing, snorkeling, birding, swimming and hiking, fed the tarpon at Robbie's, went to an all-you-can eat oyster fest, had an outdoor cob-oven pizza party, explored the everglades on three separate days, and ate fabulous seafood at numerous outdoor restaurants. And we had ice cream more times than you can count. It was heaven.

Aiden on the flats boat- we're crabbing here

Dad handles a stone crab- you break off a claw and then let the crab go (it grows a new one)

Pufferfish caught in a crab trap

Mom and a tired Haley

Aiden and Timber swimming in the ocean

Haley in the bonnet mom made when i was little

One of the highlights of the week had to be fishing for Spanish Mackerel on the flats boat. HaPa, Aiden, Andy and I headed out at 9 in the morning leaving Grandma at the house to watch Haley-doo. Our first stop was Bud n' Mary's marina...not for bait, but for ice cream. According to HaPa, this is the secret to a successful fishing trip. After our 9AM icy treat (made okay because it was already over 70 degrees out) we zipped out to near the Channel 2 bridge to some secret spot indicated on Dad's GPS and dropped the anchor and the chum bag. Everyone threw their hooks in, and within 2 minutes Aiden had a fish on. A nice Jack, which we let go. Then Aiden caught a sand perch. Then a slimy catfish. Then another sand perch. Then a grunt. Then a pufferfish.... you get the picture....on and on, while no one else caught anything. Andy had a dozen bites during this first half hour, but couldn't land anything. Meanwhile, Aiden was in heaven. He caught 11 fish before the tide turned some more and Andy finally reeled in what we had actually come for: a spanish mackerel. And then the real fun started... two hours of mackerel action resulting in a giant bucket of 17 keepers. Aiden caught a huge mackerel himself, just to top off his impressive daily total, which had to be well over 20 fish. We headed home to tell Grandma and Haley about it, and cleaned the fish with Coronas in hand... and had a delicious grilled mackerel with tropical fruit salsa for dinner.

Ice cream before fishing

Andy with a spanish mackerel

Holy Mackerel!

Aiden's mackerel

A second highlight was our day at Bahia Honda state park. We always go to this beach and it's always very nice, but if the weather and tides are just right it is a picture-perfect paradise. Long stretches of white rippled sand under a few feet of warm turquoise water- perfect for lounging and floating. And perfect for kids- no need to freak out over going too deep when it's shallow for such a long stretch. Both Aiden and Haley loved it. Aiden practiced snorkeling with his dad, and Haley kick-kick-kicked like a little dolphin in the blue water. She was all smiles when she wasn't dipping and sucking on her wet hand, amazed at the salty taste of the ocean water. We ate giant ripe florida avocados drizzled in balsamic vinegar for lunch, scooping them out with a spoon... and then we had ice cream. (of course)

Bahia Honda

Aiden at Bahia Honda

There were many other highlights of our trip, some involving birds, but I'll save those for another post. I'll just say that it's going to be hard to top this FL trip next year. We're going to have to eat an enormous amount of ice cream to be that lucky!

Little Doo

Gators at the Everglades

Haley enjoying summer dresses

Pizza in the outdoor cob oven

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Who wants a Magic Carpet ride?

We took Aiden skiing for the first time last weekend, with some friends. It was a huge success, all around! I have to admit I'd been putting off the whole skiing thing fearing that it would be a giant nightmare involving hours of lines and hundreds of dollars to rent skis, get tickets, and actually take some runs in the white stuff. Not worth it, I figured, especially if he ends up hating it because we tried to take him before he really had enough balance or stamina to handle it.

But I was totally wrong. Rentals are free for kids under 6 at the ski shop at the base of the mountain, and it took us all of, oh... 5 minutes to get fitted out with rentals and ready to leave. Then, as long as your less-than-6yr-old kid uses the "magic carpet" area (basically conveyer belts that take you up hills of varying lengths and inclines) that is also free, so no stopping for a lift ticket. And since the mountain is 15 minutes from our front door, we can go for an hour towards the end of a busy weekend day, when things are winding down and its easy to grab a parking spot being vacated by somebody done for the day. Easy peasy.

Aiden on the magic carpet

Molly gets off the magic carpet

AND Aiden loved it. And he wasn't half bad either. Our attempts to guide him in slowing (make a pizza wedge) and stopping went unheeded in favor of "fast and furious" all the way down, but the important part is that he had a great time. And we learned how easily this great time can be had... a very important lesson in New Hampshire's endless winter!

Birds? What Birds?

Okay, so 2010 has gone down in the history books as our worst-birding-year-ever (to date)... not surprising seeing that I spent several of the best birding months in bed, while Andy spent them catering to my every need or shuttling Aiden all over creation. And then once that was over, we had feisty little Haley-doo to add into the mix. Newborn babies and birding do not go hand in hand, as you might imagine. So I saw a fairly pathetic 195 birds (no idea even how that number was even generated since I was certainly not keeping track, but Andy tells me its so) while Andy weighed in at a slightly less pathetic 201. Not to worry, some things (like adding to your family) are more important than birding. We're looking forward to a more birdy 2011, while at the same time being realistic that we won't get much serious birding in until the kids go off to college in 18 years or so...

Birders gathered on a residential street to gawk at a Townsend's Solitaire. Usually this freaks out the whole neighborhood... got to love it.

However... we're off to a good start with our first lifer of 2011 on a not-too-shabby January 2. We tried for a reported dovekie on our New Years Day excursion to the seacoast and came up empty handed but on Sunday we drove a little over a half-hour to find a Townsend's Solitaire (west coast relative of the robin) in Bow. A big group of geeky birders was assembled in front of some huge houses, all gawking through their ginormous spotting scopes and camera lenses, no doubt giving the residents the total creeps... in any case, it wasn't too difficult to locate the poor bird once we found the right street. Funny, those birders are... per the usual, we were the youngest 4 people there by several decades (a good half century in Haley's & Aiden's cases), and everyone enjoyed "spotting" an incredibly cute and smiley 5 month old birder in addition to the solitaire. Aiden looked for dinosaurs through his binos, and got lots of hints from the assembled crew. How long do you think we have until they both realize their parents are crazy?

Welcome, 2011

We decided on New Years Eve that instead of being totally lame by ourselves, we would invite a few friends over to be lame with us. So we had an extremely impromptu (like 3 hours advance notice) New Years Eve party, enticing people over with promises of roasting marshmallows on the deck and tromping around in the snow with headlamps. With temps in the 40s and beautifully clear starry skies, it was a great night for some kind of festivity.

Aiden with his new snowshoes on NY eve

And it was a very fun New Years, as it turned out. We had tons of laughs (and beer) as the kids ran around inside and out...there was some extreme snow-tubing, lots of flaming mallows on sticks, and even some poker. Two of the five kids even made it to the big hurrah at midnight (and then probably wondered what all the fuss was about... that's it? The big glowy ball drops and then everyone goes to bed?!) Since I don't think I've made it to midnight myself the past few years, I was impressed.

New Years Day was also gorgeous- sunny and 60! Too nice to waste a single moment indoors, so we hastily packed up the kids and drove to the seacoast to spend the day. We walked the length of Hampton Beach looking for shells and birds and poking in tidepools along the rocky sections, and then moved north to Ordione Point for some more exploring. Aiden took off his socks and shoes and ran in the surf, and then spent hours hunting for tiny bits of colored seaglass. His pockets were overflowing with treasures by the end of the day, the best find being a rare piece of yellow beach glass. Even I had to admit I hadn't seen true yellow sea glass before.




Then to top off the day we had an early dinner at one of those quintessentially cheesy oceanfront lobster houses- the kind with tons of flourescent lobster buoys hanging off the exterior and a giant painted red crustacean out front. Everything comes fried, except the lobster. We had fried fish, calamari and scallops, a lobster roll, and lobster stew. Sooo bad for you, but sooo good. Was worth every calorie. And since we hadn't made new years resolutions yet, we weren't even breaking any :)