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Posted by Justin Miller on 09:02:01 02/10/14
Green Cay's been decent in bird selection lately...Saturday there was a lot of activity all along the front entrance trees. The usual mix of pine warbler, palm warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, black-and-white warbler, blue-headed vireo, northern parula were all present...painted buntings male and female both on the feeders and freelancing in the field to the west as you come in.
The new birds for me at this location were a summer tanager I got a few shots of right at the entrance high in the trees, just over the metal roof that you pass under when you first come out of the parking lot. This is a first-time sighting bird for me which was great - I didn't even know what it was until I got home and posted it for some IDs online. The other new bird for this location was a yellow-bellied sapsucker, which I've never seen at Green Cay. It was in the crooked palm tree to the west of the entrance hut, right out on the parking lot...there are 3 or 4 palms close together, and this is the one that curves over the woods area on the opposite side of the sidewalk from the parking lot road.
Harrier was very active inside the park - swooping on moorhens. Blue-headed vireo and warbler selection also around the chickee hut and the cypress stand. Looked like northern rough-winged swallows...but hard to ID - could have been juvie or female tree swallows - lots of the brownish birds with white bellies swooping the lake...they had forked tails. Sora are everywhere, and two American bittern I found. This was my first trip in 3 months without spotting the purple swamphens.
Side note: at Wakodahatchee, the wood storks have returned to the same islands of trees in the back where they've nested the previous 2 years...however, those islands have been deforested heavily and are not much more than empty trunks and sticks - the woodies on the far island (where some 50+ woodies were nesting the past two years) are confused looking, only 10 or so are standing around on the empty island on the leafless sticks and looking undecided about nesting. 4 or 5 were up on the high aerie pole, and it looks like 4 or 5 at least have begun to nest on the near island across from the pagoda, as an alternate location. This island is also mostly deforested, but has some leftover GBH and egret nests that were well built up and provide a little more nesting potential for the woodies.
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