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Posted by Bryant Roberts on 20:06:48 05/16/11
With jury duty falling on the same day as the most promising weather for late spring migration the day looked as though it would be one of frustration but things turned out rather well. My lunch break was long enough for me to do a little exploring along the Riverwalk on the south side of the New River where I happened upon a small park called Smokers Family Park where along with the usual late spring migrants I found a Connecticut Warbler feeding fifteen to twenty feet up in a Live Oak tree. It was walking along horizontal branches picking at leaves within reach just as it would if it were on the ground. This behavior was likely due to the almost total lack of low cover and the sparse close cut grass.
My jury group was released at mid afternoon and I headed to H. T. Birch State Park where my first good find was a Kentucky Warbler on the Beach Hammock Trail. I birded the eastern half of the park and found four Connecticut Warblers along the trails. One of these appeared to have problems, it was little unsteady on its feet and listed a noticeably to port. It was able to fly which was fortunate because it had a tendency to wander into the road. Of the fifteen to twenty Connecticut Warblers I have seen over the years in south Florida during migration this is the third that showed signs of injury. One is an incident, two a coincidence, but three has me wondering why the high rate of injury in this species here during migration.
Here is a tally of the non-resident species I observed at H. T. Birch State Park today.
Yellow-billed Cuckoo 2
Chimney Swift 2
Black-throated Blue Warbler 7
Blackpoll Warbler 12
Black-and-white Warbler 2
American Redstart 45
Ovenbird 6
Northern Waterthrush 3
Kentucky Warbler 1
Connecticut Warbler 4
Common Yellowthroat 60
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