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Posted by Rick Schofield on 12:20:11 05/23/11
In Reply to: A New Bird for My Palm Beach County List posted by Brian Rapoza
Brian,
I was lucky enough to participate in the Audubon Society of the Everglades field trip to J.W. Corbett just before leaving for Cape Cod for the summer. Eight of us took a swamp buggy out into the interior that cannot be reached by car nor, normally, by foot either. (Because of the drought, there was very little water so we might have been able to walk the route if it weren't 4 miles.) Our leader/driver, Mike Baranski, the biologist/ornithologist at Corbett, took us to a couple of the woodpecker clusters that they've banded and have, in some cases, built nest boxes.
While we got to see only two or three RCWs (as he refers to them), in some places we were surrounded by Bachman's Sparrows singing their hearts out.
Two days before the Corbett trip, my friend Beth, her daughter, and I went to DuPuis. I had spoken to Kim in their Visitor's Center before going and she suggested either dawn or dusk as the best times to see the RCWs. As, for me, it takes 1½ hours to get there and dawn, at the time, was around 5:30 am, we decided to go late in the day and stay until dusk. We were well rewarded!
Almost immediately after getting to the RCW marked area (which was on the west-side of DuPuis Grade) we had one near the bottom of a pine on the same side of the grade as the banded trees. It was then joined by another two. We could hear their calls coming from both sides of the grade so turned around to find a couple more over there. They were very cooperative.
After probably an hour of watching we drove to the fishing pier at the end of the DuPuis Grade to watch the sunset then doubled back to leave. When we got to the junction with Jim Lake Grade, where the picnic tables are set up, we stopped to see if any bats were emerging from the bat house and ended up staying there for another hour watching as hundreds flew out and away.
Rick
J.W. Corbett WMA photos:
http://rschofield.smugmug.com/Nature/JW-Corbett-WMA-May-7-2011/
DuPuis Management Area photos:
http://rschofield.smugmug.com/Nature/DuPuis-WMA-May-5-2011/
DuPuis short video:
http://vimeo.com/23640925
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