Florida, December 2001 by Jim and Anne Williams

We stayed at Bahia Honda State Park for 7 days and at the Flamingo Lodge in the Everglades for 2 days. The entire Bahia Honda Key is a park so there is no commercial development. In addition to camping there are cabins, plain but comfortable, where we stayed. The Flamingo Lodge compares to run down military housing but was comfortable enough and represents the only accommodation inside the national park.

This was a multi-purpose vacation including a grandchild and a dedicated fisherman. We went exploring every day but not exclusively birding. And the fishing was better than the birding. We found it difficult to winkle birds out of the mangrove thickets.

We used two reference books, Hidden Florida Keys and Everglades by Candace Leslie published by Ulysses Press in Berkeley (very useful) and the ABA/Lane Guide, A Birder’s Guide to Florida by Bill Pranty which was good but a little out of date with locations and directions because expanded housing and commercial development on the Keys has changed road configurations.

Highlights included a stroll through part of the National Refuge with a Key Deer accompanying us like a dog on a walk. CLOSE views of large alligators and one of the few remaining American Crocodiles, Anhingas fishing, flocks of White and Glossy Ibis and Roseate Spoonbills wheeling against the sunset as they assembled to roost for the night. Also, a front cover photographic view of a Short-tailed Hawk just above us at one of our many stops along the park road.

Mosquitoes and “no-see-‘ums” were annoying but tolerable.

Jim & Anne Williams

Jimanne@cruzio.com

Birds seen in the Florida Keys and Everglades:

Pied-billed Grebe

Magnificent Frigatebird

Double-crested Cormorant

Anhinga

American White Pelican

Brown Pelican

Lesser Scaup

Bufflehead

Red-breasted Merganser

Tricolored Heron

Little Blue Heron

Snowy Egret

Great Blue Heron

Great White Heron

Great Egret

Cattle Egret

Green Heron

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

Black-crowned Night-Heron

White Ibis

Glossy Ibis

Roseate Spoonbill

Black Vulture

Turkey Vulture

Osprey

Bald Eagle

Northern Harrier

Sharp-shinned Hawk

Cooper's Hawk

Red-shouldered Hawk

Broad-winged Hawk

Short-tailed Hawk

American Kestrel

Merlin

Peregrine Falcon

Common Moorhen

American Coot

Spotted Sandpiper

Ruddy Turnstone

Short-billed Dowitcher

Sanderling

Western Sandpiper

Least Sandpiper

Dunlin

Black-bellied Plover

Semipalmated Plover

Killdeer

Piping Plover

Bonaparte's Gull

Laughing Gull

Caspian Tern

Royal Tern

Forster's Tern

Black Skimmer

Common Loon

Rock Dove

White-crowned Pigeon

Mourning Dove

Common Ground-Dove

Chuck-will's-widow

Belted Kingfisher

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpecker

Great Crested Flycatcher

Eastern Kingbird

Florida Scrub-Jay

American Crow

White-eyed Vireo

Thick-billed Vireo (under argument)

Yellow-throated Vireo

Gray Catbird

Northern Mockingbird

European Starling

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Tree Swallow

Cape May Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Pine Warbler

Prairie Warbler

Common Yellowthroat

Red-winged Blackbird

Common Grackle