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Posted by Bryant Roberts on 21:39:06 06/17/13
A visit last Sunday to the Royal Palm Hammock, Research Road, and Long Pine Key area of Everglades National Park didn t turn up any surprising birds. A Northern Parula was singing in the hammock around the parking area at Royal Palm Hammock and I found Northern Bobwhite, Eastern Bluebirds, Brown-headed Nuthatches, Pine Warblers, and Eastern Towhees in the Long Pine Key campground area. One surprise was that I didn t see any Swallow-tailed Kites during the day. The new scrapes north of Research Road were about a quarter covered with water and had a few Black-bellied Plovers, Greater Yellowlegs, Black-necked Stilts, and waders and are well worth keeping an eye on as the shorebird migration season progresses.
At Royal Palm Hammock I noticed a dragonfly, a medium-large Darner that didn t look like any I had identified before. After waiting for a few minutes for it to land and give me a chance to get a good, identifying look I gave up and turned to leave. At that moment out of the corner of my eye I saw it swoop close to the ground and snatch a Needham s Skimmer which wasn t much smaller than the Darner. I followed it to where it landed to enjoy its meal and I was able to identify it as a Cyrano Darner. The attached photo isn t my best of the series but is one of the less gruesome.
Here are the links to my ebird reports for 6/16/13:
Royal Palm Hammock-
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S14439834
Research Road-
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S14439875
Long Pine Key-
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S14439933
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