Chilly Days in Florida

Well, the sunshine state may be sunny, but it feels more like a northeast winter lately. By March, Central Florida is usually coming out of the relatively cool winter months and is on a warming trend. Our morning temperatures have been in the 40s and barely reach the high 50s for our daytime high. Hopefully that will change in the immediate future and we'll be back to what we consider is "typical" Florida weather. In the meantime, Sharon and I have been scouting out some of the refuges in seach of birds trying to stay out of the heavy winds. Cold temps don't generally bother them as long as food is still abundant, but the winds really tend to knock them down. And so, our birding has been mostly in the wetlands and more sheltered parks of late. In the past three days, we visited several local parks including Buschmann Park in Port Orange, Riverbreeze in Oak Hill, and Spruce Creek just north of New Smyrna Beach. We were pleased to find some new warblers moving into the area including Common yellowthroats, Black and Whites, and Northern parulas. These are early spring birds for us and their showing up must mean spring is just around the corner. We'll be sending them up to our summer haunts in the near future, but for now, we'll delight in watching and photographing them here at our winter quarters. We also picked up a new "year bird", the Spotted sandpiper, in exactly the same location where we had him last year. No mating plumage yet, but attractive all the same. As I write this, I'm looking out the window of our condo and watching the waves which had been coming out of the north for the past several days, now approaching from the southeast.....signs of warmer weather finally arriving!