Saturday, February 7, 2009

Back to Florida




We've returned to our second home in Florida for the winter and are excited about revisiting our favorite southern birding spots. Our first trip to Merritt Island NWR of the 2009 season proves to be more than we hoped for. In spite of temperatures that never reached 50 and strong north winds, we still managed to record 47 species. Among the "specialties" were Loggerhead shrike, Roseatte spoonbill, American bittern (that makes two in two days!), Florida scrub jay and Savannah sparrow. All that and we only covered Biolab Road....less than a third of the drivcs and trails afforded birders in this beautiful park. Any birder or anyone interested in nature for that matter simply must have Merritt on their todo list when visiting the "space coast". It is truly one of the birding gems of the US. We'll return next week to another section of the reserve, Black Point Drive, to continue adding to our "year list".

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