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Posted by Angel & Mariel on 21:55:06 11/15/08
This morning we met up with Roberto to some birding around South Dade, we were after the Rusty Blackbird that Larry Manfredi had told us about last night. We arrived before sun break at Lucky Hammock hoping to get "lucky" and find a Short-eared Owl but it would not be seen today. A Whip-poor-will flew from the road as we parked perching up on a wire to give us our first bird of the day and in the scope! Nighthawks could be heard from the hammock proper but none took flight to give us a chance to ID. While looking for the Owl we found the Crested Caracara in the dove fields to the south, with several Northern Harriers gracefully gliding along. Rock Jetty, Carl, Mark and Patty joined us on our birding quest for some cool birds today, we could hear sparrows in and around the Hammock. Shortly afterwards we had Savannah and Grasshopper Sparrows at the hammock. On our way to the sparrow fields we caught a quick glimpse of a Lincoln's Sparrow. A Least Flycatcher was hawking insects off it's favorite perch giving us a chance to enjoy some great fly catching techniques. When we got to the fields we noticed the lack of sparrows around and picked up the same two species from the hammock. Swainson's Hawk were on the ground giving us good looks with one of our several Peregrines for the day flying above. We decided to head out to the C-111E canal to look for the Le Conte's Sparrow we had seen on Tuesday along with several other species of sparrow. But before we had a chance to look for any birds we got called over to the spot where the Rusty Blackbird was being seen by Larry and Phillip, we all got in our cars and drove over to find the Rusty hanging out on the side of the road right before you hit the parking lot. After getting some pictures and great looks we headed back towards the C-111E canal but on the way out of the park we found a White-crowned Sparrow along the main park road, which was awesome! No Le Conte's today but the Swainson's Hawks flight was awesome once again. We saw several species of Raptor while we were there including a beautiful light morph Short-tailed Hawk. After birding the fields for a while an finding nothing but Savannah and Grasshopper sparrows we split up and continued on our separate ways.
We then headed over to Dump Marsh to meet Carl and Mark to take a look at the Tropical Kingbirds. On the way to DM we made a stop over at Cutler Wetlands which hosted some nice birds including a Flamingo, American White Pelicans, Stilt Sandpipers, Avocets, and Black Skimmer to name a few. We met up with our buddies at the DM and had some lunch, after eating we headed out to bird for a little while. We had a Tropical Kingbird calling soon after we started, we looked for the Ash-throated Flycatcher that Mark Berney found and Toe relocated last week but struck out. We did have some nice birds however, a dark morph Short-tailed Hawk was circling above our heads giving us great looks at such an amazing and beautiful raptor.
After birding the DM for a while we split up and headed our own ways, since we still had our best of buddies scope we decided to look for a Franklin's Gull around the Cutler area before we had to return it to it's rightful owner. We checked out several spots until we hit the jackpot, we spotted a raft of gulls and pulled over to scope them out. Two Franklin's Gull were mixed in with all the Laughing, Ring-billed, and Lesser BB Gulls! Victory would be ours today with two life birds and some really good brews to celebrate with. We enjoyed a celebratory libation of some of the best brews we've had with great company as we talked about the amazing birds we saw today. What an awesome way to end the day, our two life birds today were the Rusty Blackbird and the Franklin's Gull which were both great birds to have in Miami-Dade County. Our year county list is growing, we stand at 273 for the year in Dade alone. What a great year it has been so far, thanks to Larry for the heads up on the Rusty and Toe for providing us with a scope to go look for the Franklin's Gull.
Nature is Awesome!
Angel & Mariel
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