Day 61: March 1st – The Indian River Shore

Sunny, warm and light winds

       A great day to be outdoors.  Our friends Bob and Diana from NY have arrived and will spend the week with us enjoying the warmth and diversity of wildlife here in the “Sunshine state”.  While I have to admit that today did not offer anything truly out of the ordinary for this area, we still had plenty of material to work with as we visited several of the small parks located along the western shore of the Intracoastal Waterway here in Volusia County.

      Our first port of call was the tiny hamlet of Scottsmoor and Scottsmore Landing Park.  At the end of the dirt road leading down to the water, a sand and gravel beach is often host to many shorebirds and waders, especially the Reddish egret.  Wrong time of the day for us today, however, as the tide has covered most of the flats where these birds can best be seen.  There is a nice lesson in tern Id as two adjacent pilings are occupied by a Royal tern and a much smaller Forster’s tern.  We know that the two are appreciably different in stature, but to see them side-by-side exemplifies how much difference there actually is.  The photo below pretty well shows this comparison.

Royal (left) vs Forster's terns

      Heading north, our next stop is the historical site of Seminole Rest.  Later in the year, this will be a productive spot for migrating warblers.  Today, we have nice sightings of a pair of male Red-breasted mergansers.  Bird-wise, other than a few Yellow-rump warblers, Laughing gulls, and Ospreys, the Rest has little to offer.  We do have quite a few anoles, small lizards, which are scurrying along the concrete paths.  The ones we see are unfortunately of the Cuban variety….an introduced species which impacts the native green variety by feeding on the same diet and depleting the food source.

      We are meeting more New York friends who are arriving for the month around 1:00 PM and have time only to check out the location where we found the Yellow-crowned Night Herons several days ago.  We do find the juvenile in almost the exact place where we had it before, but the adult is nowhere to be found.  Well, we know that these birds are not nailed down in place, but birders do have a bad habit of thinking that if you saw the bird here once, surely it will be there again the next time around.  Again, never say “always”.