Wakodahatchee wetlands

Well, we're back from our jaunt to the Florida Keys. Several things to note.....the Everglades are really dry! For the past several years, we've visited the glades in hopes of new species like the Cape Sable Sea Sparrow, but lately the conditions are so dry that it's difficult to find an abundance of anything. To make this point more salient, consider the last leg of our Florida Keys trip as we stopped along the route north heading back to New Smyrna Beach. We stopped at three locations in Delray Beach. The two most productive sites by far were the Wakodahatchee wetlands and the Green Cay wetlands. Both of the preserves have been created by the waste water treatment facilities in Delray and thus have plenty of water at their disposal (poor pun). At these two facilities, we walked the boardwalks and had the best-of -the-year looks at Purple gallinules, Least terns, Black-necked stilts, Green herons, Black-bellied whistling ducks and a myriad of other birds. The added attraction at this time of year is that many of the birds are with their young and can be photographed at close proximity. The sad part of the story is that when we visited Loxahatchee National Wildlife Reserve later in the day, it was "dead". There was so little water in the impoundments that we had to really search for ibises and herons. Our thougt is that many of the birds usually found here are now comfortably nesting at the two water reclamation plants mentioned earlier. Bottom line, when in the Delray area of Florida, don't miss the two wonderful birding sites of Wakodahatchee and Green Cay.