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Posted by Larry Manfredi on 17:39:49 03/23/08
My 6-year old son Philip and I traveled to the Dry Tortugas Saturday March 22nd. We left our house in Homestead at 4:30 a.m. and arrived at the boat dock in Key West at 7:00 a.m. We boarded the Yankee Freedom II ferry for the 70-mile ride to the Dry Tortugas. We had a Brown Booby on the crossing as well as a flock of Northern Gannets and a few Magnificent Frigatebirds. As we entered the boundaries of Dry Tortugas National Park, we encountered rain, the rain lasted about 15-minutes which slowed our departure from the boat. Once we were on shore I lugged all of our gear to the Parade Ground inside of Ft. Jefferson, to search for the Loggerhead Kingbird. We did a quick search through out the inside of the fort, we did not see the kingbird. We did have a nice male Hooded Warbler, Northern Parula, Black-and-white Warbler, Palm Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler and Yellow-throated Warbler. The Hooded Warbler was a new bird for Philip! We also had a few White-eyed Vireos, a couple Kestrels, Barn Swallows and many soaring Magnificent Frigatebirds.
We birded with Deb Hess who works on the Yankee Freedom II and Sue a volunteer for Dry Tortugas National Park. We then debated as to going to the coaling dock area or the campground area. Deb said lets try the campground area which we then walked to. We had just about walked to the campground area when Deb saw what she thought was the Loggerhead Kingbird. As we got closer, I looked at the top of one of the buttonwood trees and confirmed that "yes" this really was a Loggerhead Kingbird. It seemed to be very content in feeding on insects in the top of the buttonwood trees and surrounding area. I was able to get some good photos of the bird to document the second A.B.A area Loggerhead Kingbird.
When I left a message for Deb, about the bird being photographed by Laure Neish at Fort Jefferson on Friday March 14th., she said that she had seen the bird. She was not able to look at it for long and had to leave. On Monday March 17th. she saw the bird with other birders, they were all pretty sure they had seen an Eastern Kingbird. I talked to Deb on the phone and she was pretty certain that she had seen an Eastern Kingbird. I told Deb that she may have seen an Eastern Kingbird but I was certain that I had seen a photo of a Loggerhead Kingbird. On Thursday I sent Deb a photo of the Key West bird found by Carl Goodrich. On Friday Deb was again down at Fort Jefferson and using my photo as a guide, she called me from the fort and was pretty sure that it was a Loggerhead Kingbird. When my son and I boarded the boat Saturday, I looked at the field guides that Deb was using to try and I.D. the bird. Now I understand all of the confusion with an Eastern Kingbird, almost all of the guides have very poor illustrations of Loggerhead Kingbird. Deb was using Roger Tory Peterson's Eastern Birds Guide which has a very poor illustration. Her other guide has a better illustration but still not that great "Birds of New Providence and the Bahama Islands" by Brudenell-Bruce. I took along my book "A Guide To The Birds Of The West Indies" by Herbert Raffaele, James Wiley, Orlando Garrido, Allan Keith, and Janis Raffaele. This book also has a poor illustration of the bird so I can totally understand Deb's frustration on trying to I.D. this bird. The other confusing thing is that the Bahama race of Loggerhead Kingbird has more yellow on the undertail coverts while the Cuban race has less. Deb kept trying to see the bright yellow undertail coverts that the books show, but could barley see any. Based on what I saw I think that this bird may be the Cuban race of Loggerhead Kingbird.
I have put a photo of it on my website here: http://southfloridabirding.com/html/recent_rarities..htm
We saw lots of Sooty Terns, Brown Noddies, Magnificent Frigatebirds, Ring-billed Gulls, Laughing Gulls, Sandwich Terns, Black Skimmers, Whimbrels, Black-bellied Plovers and a few migrants.
When we got back to the boat, the captain of the Yankee Freedom II asked my son Philip if he had seen the Loggerhead Kingbird, Philip said nonchalantly "I already saw one in Key West last year". Philip is 6-years old and has seen a Loggerhead Kingbird 2-times in the A.B.A. area as well as the Bahamas!!
The good thing about this bird is that it has been there a week, the bad thing is the ferry boats are booked a few days ahead, so getting on one quickly is going to be tough. The seaplanes are down to one plane, so getting on them is going to be tough.
Not a bad trip, I wish that we could have stayed longer!!!
Larry Manfredi
Homestead, FL.
E-mail: birderlm@bellsouth.net
http://www.southfloridabirding.com
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