Day 63: March 3 – Lake Tohopekaliga

       Although Sharon and I had the Snail kite earlier this year near St. Cloud, it was a distant sighting through an overcast sky.  Not really anything to remember to say the least.  The desire to get a really good view of this Florida specialty was compounded by the fact that our visitors, Bobby and Diana, had never seen one and were anxious to add the species to their life-list.  Adding to the mix, our friends from New York who are staying down here in the same condos as us needed the bird for a “year-bird”.  The bird had been seen by Alan and Della in the past at Lake Tohopekaliga south of Orlando and reports of the kites had been posted earlier on the Florida list-serve.  All this meant we simply had to make the 1 ½ hour drive out to the site and see if we could bag this bird.

Sandhill cranes and colts

       When we arrived at the site, we were greeted by two adult Sandhill cranes with their two colts grazing along the side of the access road.  The cranes were totally engaged in the task at hand and paid us little mind.  Keeping a fair distance away, we had find opportunities to photograph the cranes.  You generally see cranes in these groups of two parents and two colts.  They have strong family ties and the young will stay with the parents for up to ten months.  These birds are most likely resident birds and will not migrate out of the state of Florida.

Snail kite

        Although we are engrossed by the cranes, we are here to get good looks and to photograph the Snail kites.  Within a minute of arriving at the boat launch, the first kite is spotted by Della.  We use our longest focal lengths to bring the birds into a decent range, but it is not until one takes flight that I really get what I wanted….a definitive Snail kite shot.  As we watched, we noticed that there was a mating pair.  The male, easily distinguished from the female by plumage and bill color, busied himself gathering nesting material and flying into the sawgrass.  The nest of these two kites will apparently be low to the ground, perhaps 3 or 4 feet above the water.  At one point the male paused long enough to quickly mount his partner before going back to work on the nest…..his reward for all his hard labor, I suppose.

     The kites feed almost exclusively on large snails, the shells of which we found along the shore of the marsh.  These snails also are a staple in the diet of the limpkin, and we did in fact find a couple of these fairly rare birds at this site as well.  Definitely a location well worth the effort and time to visit.

       We ended the afternoon by stopping at the Split Oak Mitigation Park in route home.  We can see how this might have plenty of potential as a migrant trap during the spring.  Today, however, it was really warm and the birds were not moving much at all.  We are happy to see the Blue-gray gnatcatcher flitting from branch to branch, however.  

Blue-gray gnatcatcher

       Time to head back to our home base, and we are all quite pleased with the results of the day’s excursion.