In my last post I explained that I was visiting Florida on my way to a trip to Guyana and Suriname with the primary intention of seeing my lifer Florida Scrub-jay and Manatee. The secondary purpose (apart from having an enjoyable time birding) was to add a number of species to my American Birding Association (ABA) list.
On the 19th I visited Jonathon Dickinson State Park where I saw the jay and Lake Kissimmee where I saw a wide range of species including a few that were additions to my ABA list.
Heading back south to West Palm Beach I stopped at Fort Pierce due to tiredness but heard at the motel that manatees could be seen nearby.
Whereas I wish to see as many of the world’s birds as possible, for the mammals I set my sights somewhat lower. In general I’m happy to see just one (or a few) of the different ‘types’ of mammal rather than every species, so at least one pangolin, racoon, genet or lemming for example, but one whole ‘type’ of mammals that I had failed to see anywhere were the Sirenians. The Order Sirenia comprises of two Families: Dugonidae (two species – Dugong and the extinct Steller’s Sea Cow) and Trichechidae (three species – West Indian Manatee, Amazonian Manatee and West African Manatee) in spite of spending quite a bit of time within the range of all five extant species I had never seen any.
I was out early and down at the marina at Fort Pierce looking for the sirenians. There was a Manatee centre, which opened at 10:00, signs saying ‘don’t feed the Manatees’ but no actual Manatees. Local dog walkers, fishermen and boatmen all said the same ‘they’re normally here but I haven’t seen any for a couple of days, probably too hot for them’.
One guy said the best place was at the pier on the outer banks, so I returned to Seaway Drive and crossed the bridge to the barrier islands, seeing a fairly tame Great Egret in the process.
Here I was at the actual ocean rather than the intracoastal waterway but there were no Manatees, just a lot of very tame Turnstones. The open ocean is in fact behind me (but there were no Turnstones in that direction).
Known in America as Ruddy Turnstone (because there is another species Black Turnstone on the Pacific coast), Turnstones are a bit of an enigma, found along shorelines and familiar to birders all over the world in the non-breeding season, they breed only in small areas of the high arctic, places that few people ever get to.
I pulled in as I re-crossed the bridge as I had seen two dots in the distance. They proved to be Magnificent Frigatebirds, another ABA area tick.
Not taken on this trip, but here’s a pair of Magnificent Frigatebirds taken in the Caribbean in 2017.
By the time I got back to the Manatee centre it was 10:00 and it was open. The lady there said that because it was so hot the Manatees would have moved out into the intracoastal waterway and the best way to see them was to join a boat trip which departed at 10:30.
Nice boat trip, lots of cormorants, a few shorebirds, White Ibis (above) and herons …
… and of course lots of Brown Pelicans.
I hadn’t realised that pelicans were that dangerous!
We had good views of Bottle-nosed Dolphins but no Manatees.
So now it was time to head down to West Palm Beach where I found Manatee Lagoon sheltering behind the local power station.
The warm water outflow from the power station attracts hundreds of them during the winter, but not today due to the unseasonal high temperatures which were being measured in 80s F not the expected mid 60s (that an increase from 18 C to 28 C for everybody who doesn’t live in the USA, Palau, Cayman Is, Belize or the Bahamas). Apparently there were four there yesterday, which explains why I said earlier that I regretted my decision to head north after seeing the scrub-jays yesterday as there would have been time to drive south to West Palm Beach see the Manatees and get to Lake Kissimmee in time for the boat trip.
I did get to see a number of Barracuda and Tarpon, huge fish that were clearly visible from the observation deck, I was told Manatees might swim by just off the viewing platform, but I was there for a couple of hours and saw nothing. I left and crossed the bridge to the outer banks and headed for John D McArthur Beach State Park (that’s a hell of a long name for a park). I’d hoped to find vantage points where I could scan the lagoon but it was all dense mangroves with few gaps. I managed to see a Blue-grey Gnatcatcher but little else. I returned to Manatee Lagoon in the hope that as the day cooled they might return but I arrived at 1605 to find they had closed five minutes earlier.
I had to be in Miami the following morning, so with a profound sense of disappointment I joined the I-95 and headed south. Soon the traffic built up and the traffic slowed. In spite of there being six lanes progress alternated between fast and very slow. I have driven in twenty-four of the fifty states, including in the cities of New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but have never seen such driving in the USA as I as encountered that afternoon. There were regular heavy showers but that didn’t deter some from driving at 80mph weaving in and out of the six lanes to gain a slight advantage. My guide the following day said ‘you have to realise that in Miami you’re not in the USA, you’re in Latin America’! (this photo is of the highways around Miami Airport taken from the plane as I left Miami and not necessarily of the I-95).
Rather than try and find target species by navigating the complex intersections of Miami’s highways I had booked a tour with Nature is Awesome guide Angel Abreu, Miami is full of introduced species and probably has (along with Hawaii) the highest number of introduced species in the world. One I was interested in seeing was Spot-breasted Oriole, a species I saw in Costa Rica in 2017 but not of course within the ABA area. This species at least looks like it belongs in the USA …
… unlike the Mitred Parakeet of southern South America. I suppose the UK equivalent would be comparing Little Owl to Rose-ringed Parakeet the former looks like it belongs but the latter doesn’t, even if both were introduced.
A bird that occurs in the northern Caribbean but in the States can only be found in parts of Miami and through the Florida Keys is White-crowned Pigeon. I thought we would have to search mangrove forests for them but here were a few sitting on wires in a suburban area.
The immature bird on the left can be identified by its grey not white cap.
Speaking of mangroves we went on to an area of dense mangroves where we tried but failed to see Mangrove Cuckoo (but I have seen quite a few in the Caribbean and Yucatan Mexico).
One bird we did see in the mangroves was Eastern Phoebe, either an early migrant or a wintering bird.
We did come across quite a few Yellow-crowned Night Herons.
We get Black-crowned Night Herons in Europe and they occasionally occur in the UK but Yellow-crowned but as far as I know has not been recorded in the Western Palearctic except for once or twice in the Azores.
1st year Yellow-crowned Night Herons are quite unlike the adults but of course have a similar dumpy shape.
We passed a rubbish tip on the way to the coast with a huge cloud of Turkey Vultures above it. It was clear that there was a continuous stream of them arriving from the south, migrating up from their wintering grounds via the Caribbean islands.
There were plenty of Turkey Vultures in the trees as well.
Once we reached Biscayne Bay we took a walk along the shore but soon we had to retreat back to the cars due to rain associated with a fast moving cold front. The sky quickly turned dark and a number of large columns of migrating Turkey Vultures appeared, their migration no doubt interrupted by the weather.
By using a wider field of view you can see how huge these columns or ‘kettles’ were.
Once the heavy rain had stopped we visited some lakes where we saw the introduced Green Iguana …
… and the native American Crocodile.
Other lakes held Wood Storks, Blue-winged Teal and American Coot. There is a single drake Green-winged Teal in the background.
Most of these ducks are Green-winged Teal. They are treated as a separate species in the UK from our abundant Eurasian Teal, but not so in the ABA area because they follow the Clements Checklist rather than the one produced by the IOC. Thing is they are, at least in males quite distinctive and although a number are seen each winter in the UK and they often remain into the spring there is been little or no evidence of hybridisation. On the far right of the photo is a Mottled Duck, a close relative of Mallard but with both sexes looking (almost) the same.
This pair of Wood Storks were a fine sight, seen close by due to the shielding provided by the vegetation. I could watch them probing in the mud with bills open ready to snap shut on some unsuspecting prey.
I’ve no idea what this beautiful dragonfly is, so if anyone can enlighten me contact me directly or via the comments below.
We finally returned to suburbia and beautiful big houses along the Miami’s many canals, we failed to see the target munias and parrots …
… but we did see the localised Bronzed Cowbird in a supermarket carpark. This species is only found in the Gulf States and along the Mexican border in the ABA area, although is common further south.
The dark clouds of the storm soon passed and blue skies returned. There were plenty of widespread Nearctic birds around, as well as the Florida specials, like this Loggerhead Shrike. The trip had been a great success for the birds but it still looked that I would be leaving Florida without my second lifer – the Manatee. However it was Angel to the rescue as he took me to a place where there was a fresh water outflow out into the salt water channels …
… and there to my delight were a couple of Manatees. Ok, perhaps I’d have got a better view of them at West Palm Beach Manatee Centre where you can look straight down on them, but beggars can’t be choosers.
In fact if I play with another image and remove the green glare by reducing the colour saturation to zero then the image isn’t too bad. Of course I was delighted to get this last minute reprieve.
I had a few hours on the 22nd before I flew to Georgetown in Guyana and Angel suggested I visit Key Biscayne, an island to the south-east of Miami at the north of Biscayne Bay connected to the mainland by a bridge. When I arrived at dawn it was raining but that soon cleared. This early in the year I hadn’t expected passerine migration but that’s just what I got, it was classic ‘fall’ conditions after all (I mean classic conditions for a fall-out of migrants, not that it was like autumn!). The bird in the photo is an introduced Egyptian Goose. I hadn’t realised that they and domestic type Muscovy Ducks would be common all over the city.
Most of the warblers I had seen so far could be considered winter visitors, but as the rain eased the park was full of passage warblers daring about from tree to tree and steadily making their way north. As is always the case in a ‘fall’ of migrants they had all gone within the hour. Palm Warblers were the commonest with perhaps 200 seen …
… I also saw about 100 of the delightful Parula Warbler (above) and small numbers of Myrtle Warbler (formerly Yellow-rumped Warbler until it was re-split into Myrtle, Audubon’s and Goldman’s), the lovely Black-and-white Warbler (nicknamed the ‘humbug warbler’ back home), Prairie Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, American Redstart and perhaps best of all – the stonking Yellow-throated Warbler.
With the migrants moving on I headed for the nearby beach. looking for shorebirds, gulls and terns.
One of the first birds I saw was this Fish Crow. I had seen many crows whilst driving over the last few days but I was unsure if they were the largely coastal Fish Crow or the very widespread American Crow. This bird was making the characteristic nasal ‘cah’ so there was no doubt of its identity.
There were quite a few waders/shorebirds on the beach, (Brits say waders, Americans shorebirds, but there are waders that don’t wade and plenty of other birds that aren’t waders that do, similarly not all shorebirds are found on the shore and plenty of birds that aren’t shorebirds are). This is a winter plumaged Sanderling, like Turnstone it can be found on the shorelines of most of the world during the non-breeding season but only breeds in a small area in the very far north.
The commonest wader on the beach was Semi-palmated Plover, a close relative of our Ringed Plover. Differences in face pattern and the small ‘semi-palmations between just two of the toes are hard to pick out and as far as I know all UK records of this species have been first located by its very different call.
With the Semi-P Plovers were a small numbers of the delightful and much rarer Piping Plover.
Also with the plovers was this ‘peep’. In the field the legs looked greenish and due to that and the very small size, I presumed it was a Least Sandpiper, although the legs were nowhere near as yellow as the ones I saw on Lake Kissimmee. If I’ve got this wrong please let me know in the comments.
Also seen were was a number of Wilson’s Plovers (foreground), their large bills making them easy to identify.
In the ABA area this species is confined largely to shorelines from the Carolinas to Texas.
Of course there were gulls on the beach. Always tricky to age and identify this was a good opportunity to photograph some of the American species starting with a 1st winter American Herring Gull, the diagnostic all-black tail can be seen clearly …
… and can also be seen in this photo. This species is most easily identified in first year plumage and nearly all the UK records are of first years. I’m surprised the AOU continues to lump this with European Herring Gull when genetic analysis clearly shows it to be more closely related (and possibly conspecific with) Vega Gull of eastern Siberia, rather than European Herring Gull.
A bigger surprise was the numbers of Lesser Black-backed Gulls. A common breeder and wintering species in northern Europe (a lake near us has at least 2000 coming to roost in winter). I knew that a few, perhaps Greenland breeders, wintered in eastern North America but I hadn’t expected to see five or more in one place. This of course is in full adult plumage.
This appears to be a 3rd winter Lesser Black-backed (right) with an 1st winter American Herring Gull.
Another 3rd winter with two 1st winter American Herring Gulls showing the lack white tips to the primaries in some birds of this age.
Ring-billed Gull, (a Common Gull sized species) was common as well. This species wasn’t recorded in the UK until 1973, once ID criteria were widely known the number recorded annually exploded and it was soon dropped of the official rarity list. However by the start of the ‘naughties’ UK numbers sharply decreased and you’re no longer likely to just bump into one in the course of routine birding
In this phot there is (right to left at the back) an adult LBBG, two Laughing Gulls, an abundant species along the east coast, adult American Herring Gull and a rather small ‘large gull’ who’s identity I’m not sure of but could be a 2nd winter LBBG. In the foreground are a flock of Royal Terns, recently split from their African counterpart (which has now been renamed West African Crested Tern).
Among the Royal Terns was one that was colour ringed (thanks to Martin Reid of Texas who noticed the colour ring) and I sent the details off to the USGS who administer the bird ringing/banding scheme. I got this rather nice ‘certificate of achievement’ which showed that it was ringed as a pullus in Virginia in 2018. I’m afraid I couldn’t find a way of converting the pdf they sent me to a jpg for this post so I ended up doing it the old fashioned way – printing it and then photographing the print, hence the slightly lopsided and unevenly lit appearance).
Well that was the end of a very enjoyable few days in Florida with almost all targets under the belt. I caught the flight to Georgetown, Guyana in the afternoon and arrived that evening.
So let’s end the photos with a one of the best birds seen on that final morning, a lovely breeding plumage male Piping Plover.
However I have one final comment, this is taken from my notes written at the time:
Miami has the reputation as one of the least friendly airports in the world. Having taken off your belt and shoes, emptied your pockets, placed all your stuff on the scanner conveyer, to be shouted at ‘did I give you permission to move?’ is downright rude and unnecessary. I’ve travelled through many hundred airports in something like 130 countries and have only seen that low level of service in the most remote parts of Russia.
Although I’ve only birded in Florida twice, I’ve passed through Miami airport a number of times on route to or from the Neotropics and have always felt that customer service is rock bottom. I have said that this aggressive attitude wouldn’t stop me visiting Florida, but it certainly means that I would route a visit to the Neotropics via some other hub like Madrid.
Back in late 2019 I had no idea of the impending storm brewing in China and couldn’t imagine that within five months international travel and indeed most travel, would be banned for a year or more.
I was looking for a bird tour in late February/March and whittled down the possibilities to two; either remote and little visited areas of Borneo or Guyana and Suriname in northern South America. In the end I went for the latter which was a good idea, because as far as I can tell the Borneo trip didn’t go, whether that was from lack of bookings or cancellation due to the pandemic I don’t know.
So what’s this to do with Florida? I have paid a number of visits to the USA but my only time in Florida was limited to a few hours on the way to and way back from my first trip to Costa Rica in 1981. Florida has a number of bird species found nowhere else in the ABA area (USA, Canada and Greenland as defined by the American Birding Association) but all but one, the Florida Scrub-jay can be easily found in the Neotropics. But although I don’t make a habit of visiting the ABA area just to up my ABA list, whilst I was there I thought I might as well target the ABA ticks as well.
But the question was when to go, there were two bird species and one mammal, the bizarre Manatee, that I really wanted to see. If I went in the summer I could see Antillean Nighthawk, a bird that I have missed on all my trips to the Caribbean (as it doesn’t arrive on the breeding grounds until late April) and the Scrub-jay – but the Manatees would be well offshore in the warmer weather. If I went in the winter I could see Manatees and the Scrub-jay but not the Nighthawk. Margaret had no interest in going as she had lived in Florida for several years in her previous life, so I couldn’t turn it into a family holiday.
In the end I decided the best thing to do was to visit Florida for a few days on my way to Guyana this February and hope I could see the Nighthawk on a future visit to the Caribbean, so I planned for three and a half days birding in southern Florida.
The direct flight from Heathrow arrived in the late afternoon, which was of course, late evening UK time. All of the eastern cost of Florida encloses the Intracoastal Waterway. In fact this sheltered waterway can be navigated from Brownsville in Texas all the way up to Baltimore. When Margaret first visited the USA she lived on a 33ft yacht in which she journeyed all the way from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore.
Accommodation on these islands and on the outer banks of the lagoon is reserved for the ultra-rich. Initial driving in the USA is always problematic as you adjust to driving on the right (or is it wrong?) side of the road. But exiting the airport at dusk into a multilane highway system in the rush hour was always going to be a bit of a nightmare, but I soon found my rather shabby motel. I was later told this was the type of motel that you could book by the hour for whatever nefarious deeds that you had in mind, but that didn’t matter, it was a convenient place to rest. Due to the time difference it was only 2030 when I went to bed but I was away by 0430 the next day and on the road north.
I drove 88 miles north to Jonathon Dickinson State Park, which I had been told was a good site for the jay, but I arrived far too early. Whilst waiting for it to open I birded along the road seeing species like Palm Warbler (above), Pine Warbler and Myrtle Warbler – a species I’ve seen on Scilly in the UK in the distant past.
Another common species was Northern Mockingbird. Amazingly one of these turned up in Devon in the UK this February but we were in the middle of a Covid lockdown at the time. Some chose to break the rules but I stayed put until they were relaxed and visited just before Easter. This was the third British record of this species (almost certainly ship-assisted) but the other two weren’t twitchable and so it has generated a lot of interest. Unlike the individual in the photo the one in Devon had a normal shaped upper mandible! Postscript – after writing this earlier today I heard that the Mockingbird has left Devon and has been relocated an equal distance to the east of me in West Sussex!
Once in the park it only took about 30 minutes to find a pair of Florida Scrub-jays.
Originally considered one species the ‘Scrub Jay’, it has now been split into four with Island Scrub-jay only on Santa Cruz Island off California, California Scrub-jay in the westernmost Lower 48 and Baja California, Woodhouse’s Scrub-jay in interior western USA and central Mexico and this species which is confined to south-central Florida. Clearly there is a research program going on here as both birds were colour-ringed.
I spent some time looking around the rest of the park hoping to see a variety of birds, I had some success eg with this Anhinga but I was later to regret that I didn’t drive back south and go for the Manatees at West Palm Beach.
I had booked a boat ride on Lake Kissimmee, a few hours drive to the north, for 1500 so to allow plenty of time I set off early. I arrived with loads of time to spare and birded along the access road and around the dock for a couple of hours.
Eastern Meadowlarks and …
… Loggerhead Shrikes were easily seen along the access road …
… and lots of American Kestrels.
Along the shore of Kissimmee Swamp I saw …
… Great Blue Heron …
… and Wood Stork bathing in the hot sunshine. The former of these two birds is common throughout the Nearctic region but the Wood Stork is (outside of Florida and southernmost California) almost entirely Neotropical. However I already had the species on my ABA list as many years ago, circling over Miami after a trip to the Caribbean, I saw a flock out of the plane window!
It wasn’t just the herons and storks that were sunbathing in the hot temperatures, a flock of Ring-billed Gulls had all turned to face the sun and were panting in the high temperatures, either that or I had chanced on a Ring-billed Gull choral group! This species has turned up so regularly in the UK in recent years that it has been dropped as an official rarity. I’ve seen 22 in the UK and it could have been a lot more if I’d have put the effort in.
A Forster’s Tern perched on sign, another species I’ve seen in the UK but only four times.
White Ibis fed around the margins of the lake.
This is a widespread species in Central America and Mexico, the Caribbean and northern South America but in the ABA area its confined to the Gulf Coast, Florida and the coast north to the Carolinas.
The related Glossy Ibis is more widespread being found in many parts of the Old World from Europe to Australia, including these days, occasionally in the UK.
However in the Americas it is largely confined to a narrow strip from Maine to eastern Texas. As there is another closely related species, White-faced Ibis further west then it may be that Glossy Ibis is a relatively recent colonist of the New World.
Ubiquitous throughout the whole of the Americas is the rather ugly Turkey Vulture.
One of my first big twitches in the UK occurred in 1979 when I went down to Cornwall to see the UK’s first Belted Kingfisher which over wintered on the River Camel. This species can be sexed by presence (female) or absence (male) on a chestnut belt on the breast, which isn’t much help here as the breast is hidden.
There are four species in the family Anhingidae, the ones in Africa, the Orient and Australasia use those geographic terms along with the name Darter, however the one in the Americas takes its name from Brazilian Amerindian for ‘snake-bird’ – Anhinga. This group of birds differs from cormorants by their long necks which can be shot forwards at great speed to spear rather than grab fish.
Soon it was time to head out onto the water …
… earlier there had been a question as to whether the boat would go or not as I was the only person interested, but another couple had booked, so it was ok. The boat, a sort of hovercraft with a huge fan at the rear, could skim over all the marsh vegetation in a way no normal boat could, but it was mega-noisy hence the ear protection.
With my lifer (the jay) under-the-belt it was time to look for some of the species that makes visiting Florida essential for ABA birders, starting with Purple Gallinule.
Not to be confused with what used to be called ‘purple gallinule’ in the Old World and which is now treated as six species of ‘swamphen’, this bird is a colourful cousin of our Common Moorhen. I’ve seen it before in Texas and many times in the Neotropics but these were the best views I’ve ever had of it.
Another widespread bird that is only found in Florida outside of the Neotropics is the Limpkin. Limpkins have an unusual flight style in which the wing is usually held above the horizontal and the up-stroke is faster than the down-stroke.
Perhaps one of Florida’s most iconic birds is the Snail Kite, (once known in the States as Everglades Kite, but as it occurs as far south as Argentina it’s not a very appropriate name).
The kites were visible almost constantly whilst I was at the lake.
Males have this slate grey plumage – note the thin and highly curved bill …
… that has evolved to winkle apple snails out of their shells.
This Snail Kite with a very broad supercillium and spotted breast is a juvenile. Females are similar but with a narrower supercillium and heavily streaked breast.
Other species commonly seen included Great Blue Heron …
… and Snowy Egret which differs from our Little Egret by its bright yellow iris and lores, yellow on the feet extending up the tarsus and even (as can be seen here) the tibia and more but shorter plumes on the head. There has been one record of the species in the UK, in Scotland in 2002, whilst there has been two records of Great Blue Heron both on Scilly (2007 and 2015) …
… however a most unexpected fact is that the ‘type specimen’ of American Bittern (ie the first one to be collected for scientific reasons) was shot in 1804 at Puddletown in Dorset, UK, just 15 miles from where I live.
I had the most wonderful views of American Bittern from the boat, I have seen this species before in the ABA area and the UK but never this close.
Another heron seen from the boat was Little Blue Heron, again this has been seen in Britain and Ireland, just the once in Co Galway in 2008. Of all the five American heron species seen in the UK and Ireland I’ve only seen two back home; Green Heron and American Bittern.
There were also a good number of Great Egrets on the lake. Whilst widespread throughout much of the world its only been the last 15 or so years that they have become regular in the UK. So far there’s no evidence that a New World Great Egret has made it to Britain but they are separable on bare part colouration and plumes during the breeding season and are probably a different species from the Old World ones (with the Australasian ones being a third species.)
There were other raptors around the lake, I usually have difficulty in identifying all the mid-sized American raptors because I mainly see them briefly when driving but here in the south the commonest species is Red-shouldered Hawk. This is an immature.
But there was no difficulty identifying this magnificent bird …
… I tend to associate Bald Eagles with boreal forests, so it was a bit of a surprise seeing two breeding pairs just a few degrees north of the tropics. I have previously seen them on the Oklahoma/Texas border but that was in winter.
I saw lots of other species from the boat from the ubiquitous Boat-tailed Grackle …
… to a terrapin with the wonderful name of Florida Red-bellied Cooter.
Of course no visit to a Florida wetland would be complete without views of Alligators, big ones …
… baby ones …
… and some very close views indeed.
There were a number of small waders out in the marsh. When I pointed them out to the boatman he replied that he ‘didn’t do peeps’ but closer views revealed them as Least Sandpipers mainly on account of the yellow legs.
One of the highlights of the boat trip was really close views of a nesting Sandhill Crane. This species is migratory over most of its range, wintering in southern USA and Mexico and breeding in the north from eastern Canada to eastern Siberia. However there is a resident population in Florida and Cuba.
The boatman convinced me that this sitting bird was used to the boats and didn’t move at all as we passed by.
Back on dry land there were a couple of Limpkin in a paddock close to the dock.
This ibis-like bird isn’t related to the ibises at all but to the cranes, rails and gallinules, thus its taxonomically closer to the Purple Gallinule above that to the White Ibis and Glossy Ibis shown earlier in this post.
After leaving the lake I stopped a few times along the access road seeing a range of species, Eastern Phoebe …
… Savannah Sparrow (I once saw an ‘Ipswich Sparrow’ a localised race of Savannah Sparrow, at Portland Bill in Dorset – first record for the UK) …
There were also a good number of Sandhill Cranes feeding in the fields.
Back in 2015 we went to Kearney in Nebraska to see the huge gathering of migrating Sandhill Cranes on the Platte River. In Florida I saw about 40 Sandhills, in Nebraska we saw 150,000!
From time to time I mention that this bird or the other has been ‘split’ ie is now treated as a full species when formerly it was treated as a subspecies. Of course the opposite happens, sometimes two species are found out to be a single species and are merged or ‘lumped’. This has happened since I went to Florida with the Northern and Southern Caracaras being lumped into Crested Caracara. The two former species were separated by the Amazon rainforest but as deforestation continues the two ‘species’ met and interbred. It’s likely this is a case of incomplete speciation, given another few tens of thousand years of continuous separation perhaps the speciation of the two forms would have been complete.
I headed back south, I didn’t find any motels in the area, indeed the one I had planned to stay at was in ruins after having been hit by a truck a few months earlier. I asked about motels at a gas station but was told I was ‘in the middle of nowhere’ and not to expect such things. I continued back south on the turnpike until tiredness and hunger took over so I stopped just outside Fort Pierce. The first motel I tried was mind-numbingly expensive but I found another at a more reasonable cost. Whilst checking in I told the receptionist I was heading down to West Palm Beach the following day to look for manatees when a guy queuing behind me said ‘no need to go all that way, there’s some just down the road from here, I saw them this morning’.
So what happened the next day and the two days after that will be the subject of my next post.
This post covers a couple of hours visit to a single site, the commercial salt pans at Punta Morales in north-western Costa Rica. As waders (or shorebirds as they are known in the Americas) have a universal appeal to birders I have dedicated an entire post to this short visit and have attempted to illustrate every wader seen plus a few of the terns. We visited some salt pans in this area in 1981, possibly the same place. Nearly all the species would have been lifers then, now none of them were, but I enjoyed seeing them just as much as I did the first time.
An early afternoon visit to the salt pans was most successful. Unfortunately we only had two scopes between us so initially it was a slow process getting onto all the waders. However as we walked around the pans we found we could get close enough to most birds for decent photos and indeed I think I managed to photograph every wader present.
Many birds were on the bunds between the pans, others were wading in the brine. This mediocre photo has been included as its the only photo I took of Grey (or Black-bellied) Plover, seen in the top right.
There were large numbers of Black Skimmers present. A not particularly appropriate name as all three species of skimmer show a similar black and white plumage and this is no more black than the other two. These aberrant terns feed by flying low over water with their long lower mandible just below the water’s surface (the so-called ‘unzipping the pond’), if the lower mandible encounters a prey item the upper mandible snaps shut to secure it.
With the skimmers was a small number of Royal Terns. Recent genetic work was shown that the African and American forms of Royal Tern have diverged sufficiently to be considered separate species, but as yet I haven’t heard of any reliable ways of separating them in the field, not has this discovery been taken up by mainstream world checklists.
At the back are three black-billed Cabot’s Tern’s named after American physician and ornithologist Samuel Cabot III. This is a recent split from the Old World Sandwich Tern, although the American checklist committees SACC and NACC have yet to ratify this (but the IOC and BOU has). In the foreground is a ‘Hudsonian’ Whimbrel. This larger, more strongly patterned, dark-rumped version of our Eurasian Whimbrel has been treated as a separate species by the BOU, but not by the IOC or other world checklists. As the BOU will adopt the IOC checklist as the basis of the British List as of 01/01/18 then we will lose this one from the British List (there have been a few records of this American form in the UK including along-stayer in Cornwall).
Most of the species of wader present have occurred as vagrants in the UK at some time or other (hence British birders interest in American waders) but one that hasn’t is Wilson’s Plover which has a more southerly distribution than most.
Also known as Thick-billed Plover this species breed from SE USA to Belize and the West Indies and winters as far south as Brazil.
Another species that has not made it to the UK is Marbled Godwit which has an interior distribution in North America and doesn’t make any of the major ocean crossings that seems a prerequisite for regular trans-Atlantic vagrancy. A single Whimbrel is the middle of the flock facing left.
Here Marbled Godwits can be seen with Black-necked Stilts, Stilt Sandpipers and a single Willet.
Marbled Godwits in flight, unlike the other three species of godwit they don’t show either white wing-bars or white rumps..
Yellowleg species were surprisingly scarce on this trip. perhaps they had already departed for their breeding grounds in North America. This is the Greenshank-sized Greater Yellowlegs. I saw my second UK Greater Yellowlegs in Hampshire in 2015 but Lesser Yellowlegs is much commoner, one stayed at our local patch for seven months from September 16 and eventually departed after I had left for Costa Rica in late March.
Closely related to the Old World Black-winged Stilt, the Black-necked Stilt of the Americas was common on the saltpans. There are four ‘black-and-white’ stilts worldwide differing only in the precise pattern of black and white on the head, neck and back and there is a good argument for lumping them all together.
Joining the Stilts, Godwits and Whimbrel in this photo is a single Stilt Sandpiper in the foreground and four Willets. This omnatopoeic bird surely consists of two species, Eastern and Western Willet (these are all Western Willets) and a proposal to split the two forms is being considered by the NACC currently, here is a summary taken from the proposal: The Willet (Tringa semipalmata) includes two broadly allopatric subspecies that exhibit morphological, ecological, vocal, and genetic differentiation. The eastern subspecies (T. s. semipalmata) breeds almost exclusively in saltmarshes and brackish coastline habitat along the Atlantic Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and certain localities in the Caribbean In contrast, the western subspecies (T. s. inornata) breeds in brackish and freshwater wetlands in the Great Basin as well as prairies in the north-western United States and southern Canada. The western subspecies winters along rocky habitat on the Pacific coast from the north-western United States south to Chile. While the two species may co-occur during migration and on certain wintering grounds, pair bonding occurs on breeding grounds which are allopatric between the two subspecies. For more see: http://checklist.aou.org/assets/proposals/PDF/2017-A.pdf
There were a number of Short-billed Dowitchers on the pans. This is a difficult bird to separate from the similar Long-billed Dowitcher (and no, bill length isn’t much help) especially if they are silent. Long-billeds are regular if scarce in the UK but Short-billeds are mega rarities, the one at Lodmoor, Dorset in 2012 was only the 3rd for the UK.
Here is a better portrait of one species that has appeared in the background in previous photos – Stilt Sandpiper, (not to be confused with the unrelated Black-necked Stilt at the back). A regular migrant in the Americas, this is a very rare species in the UK although I have seen three in Dorset or west Hampshire over the years.
Here a Ruddy Turnstone, a very common species in the New World and the Old, perches behind the New World Spotted Sandpiper.
The New World Semi-palmated Plover is very similar to our Ringed Plover. Small differences in the bill and facial pattern separate the two and of course there are the semi-palmations between the toes for those with very good scopes and perfect viewing conditions. But the best way to locate a vagrant Semi-P Plover is by call.
It’s now time to look at the smallest waders, the so-called ‘peeps’. This, a Semi-palmated Sandpiper, was by far the commonest.
Semi-P Sandpipers and a Semi-P Plover. with a single Least Sandpiper at the far right.
A flock of Semi-palmated Sandpipers beautifully reflected in the brine solution.
This flock of ‘Semi-P Sands’ is joined by a single Stilt Sand and a Semi-P Plover. Notice the bird in the far lower left, the long curved bill means that this is almost certainly a Western Sandpiper on route to Alaska or far-eastern Siberia. Relatively easy to separate in juvenile or in breeding plumages, winter plumaged adults can be very tricky. They winter further north than Semi-Ps, a lot of them within the southern USA and they were much rarer than Semi-Ps in Costa Rica.
Perhaps the rarest bird at the pans and one that had never been recorded by Birdquest on their many trips to Costa Rica was this Wilson’s Phalarope.
There were relative few non-waders/terns at the pans but this Great Egret posed for its portrait. The taxonomy of the species isn’t settled either with the small far-eastern subspecies modesta probably deserving species status, whilst the New World alba differs from the Eurasian form in bare part colouration, breeding plumes and display.
As was always the case we didn’t have enough time to really study all the subtle features of these fascinating waders and soon it was time to leave the pans and head for Hacienda Solimar which will be the subject of the next post.
…. but we’ll end this post with a portrait of the world’s smallest wader, the appropriately named Least Sandpiper.
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