Trip Report: South Florida
Feb. 28-March 7, 2006

by Eva Casey  in consultation with Herman D'Entremont

On Wednesday March 1 we breakfasted at the Farmers Market restaurant (opens 5am, "everything homemade"), which is located inside the gates of a fruit and vegetable warehouse area on Krone Avenue (we had a hard time finding it, as we never imagined a restaurant would be in there), then drove through farmland the 13 miles or so to the Everglades National Park entrance, stopping at Robert Is Here, a farm stand famous for Key Lime Shakes, and deservedly so. I indulged in a second at the end of the day on our way back to Homestead.

We spent hours on the boardwalks at Royal Palm Hammock where we got knockout looks at birds and alligators. I took a little movie of a Great Blue Heron manipulating a big fish into a lengthwise position so he could swallow it. We drove all the way to Flamingo at the southern tip of Florida, even though the tower and trails and all facilities at Flamingo are still closed due to damage suffered during the last hurricane season. I was amused by the "Elevation 4 feet" sign (compare with sinage I photographed in Colorado), but in fact  in Florida a difference of a few feet can mean a hardwood habitat instead of the river of grass.

Thursday March 2nd before we left Homestead Herman pointed out  the Common Mynas  around the motel, and I photographed the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker on a palm in the yard too. Mynas are not ABA countable pending further study (they've been established in South Florida since 1982), but we are counting them among the 115 species we "got" on our Florida trip, 81 of which I photographed, a good ratio compared to my other trips. In Florida lots of the species are conspicuous and seen repeatedly. Herman says he can't remember ever seeing so many waders. Herman was surprised at how few small birds there were, though.  Ones we did see repeatedly were Palm Warbler, Blue-gray gnatcatcher, and Phoebe. We heard the Great Crested Flycatcher often, but I only saw it once and never photographed it.  Belted Kingfishers were common. It seems like there were one or two  pied-billed grebe on every pond. Red-shouldered Hawk is by far the most common hawk. Ospreys are also very common. Throughout our trip I enjoyed getting a chance to observe behaviors, such as the Snowy Egret dragging its golden feet along the surface of the water to attract prey, and Skimmers skimming, nesting birds with young, and courtship behaviors.

We were at the Shark Valley (There's a Shark River in the Everglades) entrance to Everglades National Park off the Tamiami highway when the gate opened at 8:30am March 2. I'd made reservations for the first tram ride at 9am. There's a 15 mile paved loop trail used by the Park Tour "trams" (open motorized vehicles, sometimes linked together, though the 9 am one was just one unit.) and by cyclists from the Visitor's center to the tower and back. The road, which is more like a bike path, was build by an oil company before the Everglades became a National Park. The Everglades became a National Park in 1946. In 1947 Congress voted to drain the Everglades for sugar cane farming. Go Figure. Fresh water is draining via canal directly to the ocean instead of filtering into the sandstone aquifier like it used to. The human population  depends on that aquifier  for drinking water. Population centers like Miami need more, not fewer, opportunities to experience nature within reach. During the Clinton Administration a 36 year plan to reverse some of the draining was adopted. Implementation started in 2000. The birds are already responding. We had Clapper rail, Limpkin, Purple Gallinule, Yellow-crowned Night Herons,  Roseate Sponbills,  Bald Eagle, and lots of wood storks and ibises, on our tram tour.

We birded our way to the Spa-fari B&B in Everglades City, housed in a former bank, where we stayed the nights of March 2 and 3. The Everglades City gate to the Everglades is a place where you can book boat tours out to the Ten Thousand Islands (Actually there are about 12,000)--the mangrove habitat of the Everglades, or inland via a river to the inland mangroves. We took both tours on the morning of our one full day there. We got great looks at bottle-nosed dolphins, but not much else new. The closest we got to manatees--we've never seen one in the wild in the States-- was an Osprey nest atop a "Manatee Zone" sign.. We lunched al fresco at a gourmet natural foods restaurant on Chukalusky Island, accessible by causeway. Then we spent the afternoon doing the 17 mile loop in Great Cypress National Forest. We were alone on a wide unpaved rode near a canal. It's almost a given that there's a canal alongside every road in South Florida because a canal needs to be dug to c\build up the dry road, and is also needed for drainage.

Our B&B suite had a kitchen, and our two breakfasts were provided in a picnic basket so we could cook them ourselves, which is good for birders, who might want to eat at the crack of dawn. We did not breakfast at the crack of dawn, but it was nice to have that option. One of the bird books says "If you don't see a Red-bellied Woodpecker in Florida, turn in your binoculars." Every time we stepped out of the Bank B&B there'd be a Red-bellied Woodpecker on about every third palm tree.

On Saturday March 4 we birded our way to Naples where Herman's sister Eileen lives. We did the Janes Scenic Drive in the Fakahatchee Strand, and walked the Big Cypress Bend boardwalk, which is off the Tamiami highway, also in the Fakahatchee Strand. On Janes Scenic drive we had several Swallow-tailed Kites soaring, but I did not manage to photograph them. At Great Cypress Bend we got two barred owlets.

We went to the 4:30 Mass at a very large, yet still bursting at the seams church, then visited Eileen and Bob at their beautiful home. Soon Herman's niece and nephew-in-law joined us and we all repaired to the Flanagans' Club where we had a fine meal.

Sunday March 5 we did Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, where I got my life Painting Buntings, both male and female. Too bad my only photographs are at a feeder that had protective wiring around it that makes the birds look caged. We got an adult Barred Owl. I photographed a Great Egret with what I thought was beautiful, but aberrant, green on its face. Later I read on the internet that lores turn green and the yellow bill blackens during the mating season, and I saw a beautiful picture there that combined nuptual plumage with the green lores. I photographed both green lores and nuptual plumage, but in two different individuals. We saw a frog about the size of my thumbnail.

We drove to Fort Myers by way of the farm country around Immolokee. We searched the little airport there in vain for burrowing owls. All we got was Loggerhead Shrike and Meadowlark, which were not trip birds, but I like them. Not only are  they wonderful -looking, but they sit in the open long enough for me to admire them. 

Monday March 6 we got Oystercatchers on the causeway to Sanibel Island. Before entering the Ding Darling Nature Reserve we deliberately overshot the gate a bit to make a little detour to the street where Ellie and Stauffer rented a cottage for a week last December, Jamaica Lane, and the other leg of that U-shaped street, Tahiti Lane. Stauffer said Pileated Woodpeckers and Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers were plentiful on the palms there. We got a Pileated immediately.

Herman was kicking himself for forgetting to put his scope in the car for this day trip, but he compensated by talking to other birders who invited him to look look through their scopes. We saw our only crocodile (endangered, saltwater) of the trip at Ding Darling. This individual is the northernmost known crocodile. About 4pm, having just arrived back on the mainland from Sanibel, we stopped at the public beach at the end of the John Morris Parkway within site of the causeway. We stayed there a couple of hours. There was a large mixed flock of Skimmers (a life bird for me), terns (mostly Royal Terns, but a couple of Common Terns and a couple of Forsters Terns), gulls (mostly Laughing Gulls, a few Ring-billed, and one Herring Gull), and shorebirds (Willets, Marbled Godwits, a Ruddy Turnstone, Sanderlings,  Semipalmated Sandpipers..), and Herman had to check out every one. It was almost dusk when we arrived at a neighborhood ballpark in Cape Coral--across the Caloosahatchee river from Fort Myers where A Birder's Guide to Florida" by Bill Pranty said there were Monk Parakeets and Burrowing Owls. And there they were, the parakeets flying in and out of the ballpark lights, and a pair of owls on each of five owl burrows, each protected by a rope that would do nothing to deter a dog or cat or a malicious human. Those were both trip birds, and life birds, for me.

Tuesday morning March 7 found us at Lee Park near the Fort Myers power plant where manatees hang out in season to warm up. In past years the season has lasted into March, but when the temperature in the Gulf of Mexico reaches 72 degrees the manatees return to the gulf. The temperature in the gulf was already 72 degrees. There were some little dolphins, with telltale fins frisking around in the warm power station outflow. I had a plan to spend the rest of the morning at a nearby nature reserve, but Herman, still heady from that wonderful beach we visited yesterday, suggested we go to what my guidebook said was a great spot at the Holiday Inn at Fort Myers Beach. We did go there, and we did make it on time to the Red Sox-Orioles Spring Training game at 1:05pm at City of Palms Park, but it was tight, and we did not get any trip birds at that lagoon behind the Holiday Inn. We did not have time to walk beyond the lagoon to the main beach. Fort Myers Beach is a resort Island with a traffic problem. The Holiday Inn is 4 miles from the bridge to the mainland, so we inched along for 4 miles each way.

The Red Sox won 10-6. The right field grass, where Nancy and Jeff had already secured ring-side spots in the grass for us all, is small and the crowd was happy and friendly. It's a sloped lawn so everybody can see. We flew home from the Fort Myers airport. We had a 6pm flight but it was cancelled. Don't ask. We were lucky to get home around midnight.  Our old cat, who needs to gain weight, had put on half a pound under our neighbor Audrey's good care, and he was affectionate.  After some previous trips he's been slow to warm up, and mad at us. He even went on a hunger strike for 2 days once. 

Florida trip list
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The photos linked this page were taken with my Canon Digital Camera w/ 12X zoom lens or with my Olympus digital camera with 10x zoom lens.

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Last revised: Aug. 17, 2008