Setting off from Manchester
early on the morning of March 28th, after a long flight of just over
8 hours we hadn’t even touched down on the runway before we had achieved our
first lifer – a serpent like Anhinga hunting in one of the many water bodies
dotted around the airport. We were off to a great start already! Looking out from the plane's windows, Great and Snowy Egrets lined the margins of the many pools, while several vultures and hawks circled distantly over the trees,
taking advantage of the midday thermals. Leaving behind the chilly English
weather, the 28° - 32°C we experienced in Florida was a huge but welcome change
– although at times the extensive heat became a little bit too much and made
birding especially challenging!
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| Delicious breakfast to fuel us for the 8 hour flight! |
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| Followed by beautiful ice formations over the North Atlantic |
Speeding through customs and
picking up our large Toyota hire car that would be our mode of transport for
the fortnight, we were soon on our way, Alex navigating through the Orlando highways
as we picked up several familiar birds –
Ospreys were a regular sight fishing while
Black Vultures,
Common Grackles and
Great Blue Herons were all reminiscent of
the avian fauna of New York.
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| Osprey |
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| American Black Vulture |
Whilst the birds were familiar, the landscape in
Florida was extremely different to that we’d experienced in the Big Apple –
gone were the skyscrapers, bustling streets and yellow taxi cabs and in their
place were huge expanses of water and lakes, while small pools and marshy
ditches lined every roadside, providing a secret haven for birds in amongst the
hotels, restaurants and theme park rides scattered across Orlando. Florida
definitely wasn’t short of bird life!
Arriving at our hotel where we
would be based for the next two nights, unpacking the car turned in to a half
hour long exercise – the trees surrounding the car park were absolutely alive
with birds. At least 10
Palm Warblers fed up amongst the leaves, flitting from
branch to branch along with several
Yellow-rumped Warblers, while Alex expertly
picked out a fine
Blue-headed Vireo.
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| Palm Warblers were one of the most abundant warbler species we saw in Florida |
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| Yellow-rumped Warbler were also seen in large numbers |
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| Blue-headed Vireo |
This was a species we had expected to see
further on in our journey, but remarkably this turned out to be our only one of
the trip – an extremely lucky find! With a slate-grey/blue head and bold white
eye markings, this was a new Vireo species for us that we hadn’t encountered
before, and with the overwintering Florida birds just starting to move away
from their wintering grounds, this was without doubt a migrating bird on the
move.
A familiar squeak alerted us to a single
Blue-grey Gnatcatcher, while a
high pitched trilling overhead betrayed the presence of 10+
Cedar Waxwings
powering north.
Delighted with our early
success and buzzing from the fantastic feeling that seeing a new bird for the
first time creates, we hastily dumped our bags in the room before heading out
for a walk around the hotel complex. A quick stop across the road revealed
another migratory flock of 15+ Yellow-rumped Warblers, while a distant hawk sat
on a telegraph pole once again exposed our weakness in raptor ID –
Red-shouldered or Red-tailed – we just weren’t sure.
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| Distant Hawk sp. - probably Red-shouldered |
With our hawk having
disappeared off behind the trees we explored the edge of a large pond next to
the hotel car park. Several more
Palm Warblers responded extremely well to
Alex’s pishing, flocking in to the adjacent tree and providing spectacular
views, allowing us both to get some photographs of what is a relatively
subtlety coloured warbler in terms of American standards.
Having cleaned up on warblers
in New York last May, relatively few species would be new to us here in
Florida, and along with Pine and Prairie, Palm was one of our key missing
target warblers. One of the first migrants to make a move, we were far too late
to see any on our trip in May last year, so it was a great feeling to have already
nailed one of our three main target warblers. With a gorgeous cinnamon cap and
pale yellow throat, Palm Warblers turned out to be one of the most abundant
species of the trip, and their characteristic high pitched chipping and tail
flicking were a feature at almost every site we visited.
With jet lag setting in and
needing to stock up on supplies, we had one last look at the lake in the hope
of spotting our first Alligators. While there was an absence of any sharp
teeth, we did manage to spot a huge
Florida Softshell Turtle rising up to the
surface amongst the gloom – our first new reptile of many for the trip.
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| Florida Softshell Turtle |
Driving just down the road to
pick up the essential juice, biscuits and crisps that would keep us going over
the next fortnight, I spotted our first
Wood Stork feeding in one of the
roadside pools. All too brief and unable to stop, we luckily achieved much
better views of this Florida speciality at several sites later on in the trip.
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| Wood Stork - luckily we got much better views later on in the trip |
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| Juice stocks! |
For a day when no serious
birding was planned and having barely left the hotel grounds, 4 lifers was an
excellent start to our trip, and after a quick snack we fell in to a much
needed sleep (being awake for nearly 24 hours was starting to take its toll)
looking forward to the birding delights the next 12 days would bring.
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