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Posted by Paul Bithorn on 13:40:22 12/02/07
Thirty birders assembled for the Tropical Audubon Society's annual "Exotics" fieldtrip on Saturday, December 1, 2007. We met at 1:00 p.m. in the emergency overflow parking lot of Baptist Hospital on Kendall Drive and proceeded to walk to the neighborhood directly across the street from Baptist Hospital (Brian Rapoza's; Birding Florida-pg. 104) on Kendall Drive (S.W. 88 St.) and S.W. 87 Ave. We walked around several blocks across Kendall Dr. and soon located a Loggerhead Shrike, a species in decline in many areas of the country, but holding its own in South Florida. We could hear Monk Parakeets concealed in their stick-nest built around an FP&L transformer. The recent invasion of Cooper's Hawks into South Florida seemed to make the parakeets a little more wary about coming out into the open.
The temperature was a balmy 85 degrees, but a 10 knot wind made the birding/exercise quite comfortable. A flyover of Mitred Parakeets created a little excitement but the birding was rather slow.
A dark morph Short-tailed Hawk, Northern Harrier, Cooper's Hawk, Black and Turkey Vultures,Ring-billed Gull and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker were seen during the walk. We also located Muscovies, Rock Pigeons, Eurasian Collared Dove and European Starlings and House Sparrows on the hospital grounds.
Disappointed in not seeing any Red-Whiskered Bulbuls, we went to "Plan B". We piled into several cars and drove slowly through the neighborhood we had just walked. One of the cars soon spotted two Hill Mynahs on a telephone pole. We heard the ventrilocal call of a Bulbul in the distance and soon spotted one on the wire adjacent to the Monk Parakeets stick nest and three parakeets flew in to see what all of the excitement was about. Our persistence had paid off!
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