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Posted by Alex on 22:43:17 08/06/04
What a day it was...
I started out in Miami Shores with a female Cerulean, a Prairie, a female Black-and-white Warbler, a female American Redstart, and a few gnatcatchers.
In Biscayne Park, in the heat of the day, I managed to see an Osprey and a resident male Cooper's Hawk.
Already, dozens of Barn Swallows and upwards 200 Purple Martins flew over in 30 minutes of sitting on my back porch. Even then, I thought the PUMA numbers were very good.
My mom and one of her friends wanted to spend part of the afternoon in a very nice public park called Sugar Sands in Boca Raton. Here I would have the chance to boost up my Palm Beach County list with Red-tailed Hawk, Yellow-throated Warbler, many more Barn Swallows and, of course, a large amount of Purple Martins. Much more impressive was the large amount of Atala Butterflies! Hundreds inhabited this large pineland park, due to a certain cycad plant, Coontie. Wow, what beautiful insects. The caterpillars were everywhere. Paul Gore thanked Roger Hammer for reintroducing them not long ago, and I will too. Thanks Roger!
By 5:00, we were back in Broward hanging out at my mom's friend's house. I bored one of their bikes, and biked around the birdy neighborhoods and parks. Here, Purple Martin numbers really picked up. Everytime I looked up, you could see between 10 to 30. About 40 Mottled Ducks were seen around a gulf course, and, even better, a flock of 46 (give or take 1 or 2) Swallow-tailed Kites. Another time when I looked, a v-shaped flock of birds were flying VERY high up. Their wingbeats were not right for ibis or cormorants, so I raised my bins. I watched them for a while, maybe 30 seconds before I knew what they were. The birds were so high, it is wise to estimate somewhere around 2000 feet up. And there were a lot of them, I'd say between 60-70. I figured out they were shorebirds, and then saw they were Black-necked Stilts. Very neat. I made my way to a large park called Pine Island Park (I think) to look for Burrowing Owls. I had not one owl, but did see handfulls of Killdeer, and a few Pectoral Sandpipers feeding in the flooded fields. I was attacked by huge mosquitoes, but stayed long enough to make sure nothing unusual was about. Common Nighthawks were calling now, and headed off back to the house. The huge flood lights around the soccer and ball fields hosted roost to hundreds of Purple Martins. Besides a few nighthawks, my last birds of the day were ~20 peeps flying southward over the park.
A very good day for the birds.
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