[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TAS BirdBoard ] [ FAQ ]
Posted by Angel & Mariel on 19:17:48 09/14/10
Hey all,
We finally made the move from the south campus to the Biscayne Bay campus. We now have to find new birding spots on this smaller campus. Although there are far less foraging trees and lakes we now have a view of the bay and can watch migrants as they arrive of the water.
Yesterday we had our first migrant on campus in our first five minutes there; a light morph Short-tailed Hawk! We managed to find a tidal pond that has been restored similarly to Virginia Keys's resto project. We had an American Avocet at this location, today it was dead.
On our way home we experienced something really cool. While waiting at a stop light we saw an explosion of birds taking off from the Opa-locka Airport's field. When we looked at this large mass of birds with our binocs we realized that they were Bobolinks. This flock must have been over 500 birds strong; it reminded us of the Tree Swallow swarms we have observed in ENP during winter! They took off from the airports field and headed almost due south.
Today on campus we had our first migrant Cooper's Hawk of the season. We watched this adult male fly in off the ocean, awesome. First thing he did was fly into an Oak tree and preen his feathers. Minutes later we watched him take off and fly south. At this point it had started to sprinkle, just then we heard lots of Warbler flight calls overhead. After finding the flock in the sky we watched ~70 warbler sp. fly overhead also heading south. The rain cut our walk short but we spied some areas that we will check out in the future.
p.s. An east wind gradient has been killing us migration wise down here in Miami. Big numbers of migrants have been moving since Friday but east winds keep displacing these birds way out over the Gulf. Lets hope for a change in winds soon.
Nature is Awesome
Angel & Mariel
[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TAS BirdBoard ] [ FAQ ]