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Guide to Florida by Bill Pranty which was good but a little out of date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