Our trip to Sanibel Island, Florida has been great, not as warm as usual—neither the air or water—but we’ve been in the ocean a few times.
The dolphins were playing right off the beach this afternoon chasing small fish right up into the shallows where much of the dolphin was exposed.
One played around a family of three people that was out in the water playing frisbee. It was almost close enough for them to touch its back, but they didn’t. They did get a few iPhone pictures.
The birding has been great nearly every morning at the Lighthouse on the east end of the island.
New birds have been coming in every day and a couple storms knocked down some that intended to fly right over on their way north.
One morning we had a strong north wind, and the end of the island was crawling with birds of all colors.
Some trees had 20 to 30 indigo buntings and kingbirds sitting all over the tops of the trees. They looked just like Christmas bulbs.
There is a lot of food on the fruit-bearing trees which attract bugs so some of the birds are eating the bugs and some are eating the fruit.
Most all of these birds have just made the journey across the Gulf of Mexico from South America, where they spent the winter. They used up most of their fat supply making that trip so they work on any available food as soon as they hit land on this side.
It doesn’t seem to matter how close humans are to them as they forage on this food.
Sometimes when they get hit by rain and wind storms they have just enough energy to walk off the beach into the woods for some protection when they make land. There has been a great variety of warblers and other song birds so far with many more to come.
The most plentiful birds so far have been the indigo buntings—or maybe it just seems that way because they show up better with their bright colors.
Today, Easter Sunday, there were a couple trees in the Lighthouse area that had many varieties of birds in them at the same time.
One tree by the Fishing Pier has been filled with feeding birds for three days now.
Today it had Palm, Prairie, Cape May, northern parula, prothonotary and blackpoll warbler, indigo bunting, blue grosbeak scarlet tanager, Baltimore oriole and orchard oriole feeding in the branches.
Not far away was a blue-winged warbler, redstart, ovenbird, rose breasted grosbeak, pileated and red-bellied woodpecker, arcadia flycatcher and a black-billed cuckoo.
The black-billed cuckoo was getting the most attention.
It was also the hardest to see, so not all the birders who had come there this morning got to see this one.
At one spot there were probably 30 birders looking for the cuckoo at one time. I didn’t get a picture of the birders, but I did get photos of the bird.
Last week we took a trip to ST Area-5 northeast of Immokalee. This area is only open one Saturday a month by reservation only, and my friend Wes Dirks got four of us in.
It is approximately a 20-mile trip around the roads in the area by guide only.
We would travel short distances, and if a good bird was spotted we would stop and scope the area for it or other shore birds and ducks.
Our first stop was not far from the entrance where we all got to see a sora rail.
I got two life birds on this trip. One was the purple swamphen which we saw three or four times.
Another bird, which I had once seen in rehab but not in the wild, was a crested caracara. We saw several of these on our tour of ST-5.
This bird is a carrion eater but will also catch its own prey. It often sits on power poles or fence poles looking for prey.
The other new bird I got on this trip was a scissor tailed flycatcher which I got at the Lighthouse the day before this inland trip.
One of these was also seen sitting on a power line at the entrance of ST-5, but we missed this one.
This bird has a very long feathery tail, orange to pink breast and is a little larger than our eastern kingbird.
At ST-5 there were hundreds of black necked stilts, coots, blue winged teal and a large number of white pelicans. I think the pelicans got the word about the weather where they summer and nest, and have hung down here for a little while longer.
I met some folks from the Adirondacks while out birding. One lady, who lived in Saranac Lake and now lives down here, was at the Lighthouse one morning.
She wanted to see a blue grosbeak and sure enough one landed right in the tree in front of us.
Then a red headed woodpecker landed in another branch of the same tree.
This was another bird she had to add to her life list. She added that she really wants to see a mangrove cuckoo, but that didn’t happen.
I met another couple, who have a place on the channel from Lower Saint Regis Lake to Spitfire Lake above Saranac Lake. They were birding in the gardens by the Bailey Tract, and a pretty kestrel landed in a tree top not far from us.
We had a short chat. They are supporters of the loon program in the Adirondacks, for which I thanked them.
The night blooming cereus plant has some flower buds, but that’s another story.