February 24th
– March 2nd
Began the week with a change of plans. Originally, we had decided to make the
trip south to the nation’s first national wildlife refuge, Pelican Island. Numerous sightings of a White-cheeked
pintail at the main pond of the refuge was hard to resist. So we got up early Sunday morning,
packed our provisions for the day and got ready to depart. One last check on the web and the rare
bird bird alert for the state was the bearer of bad news, however. The bird had finally apparently
departed from the area, and driving for 2 ½ hours looked less inviting that it
had the night before. Time to
shift gears and make new plans.
We had reports of a new year
bird, the Cinnamon teal, just to the south of our wintering quarters. Merritt Island is always productive and
we had not visited the “Peacock’s Pocket” area this year. Targets included the teal, male Painted
bunting (have had good views of the female, but the male has eluded us thus
far), and of course the teal. By
day’s end when the storms began to roll across the flatlands, we had all our
targets plus 58 more species.
Tuesday rewarded us with a new
Year-bird which was actually a yard-bird.
More than likely driven over to the seashore by the heavy winds of
yesterday’s and last night’s storms, an exhausted Chuck-wills-widow was found
lying in the grass of our condo.
The condo manager, Julius, saved the bird from the impending doom of a
horde of Fish crows which were descending upon the night-jar. Florida Fish and Wildlife arranged for
a pick-up point to meet Julius and transfer the bird to the local rehab
unit. The last we heard, the
Chuck-wills-widow was doing well and expected to survive its ordeal.
On Wednesday, we again headed
out on a chase after that White-cheeked pintail was once again reported as
having returned to its haunts in Pelican Island. We already had a trip planned for the Marl Bed Flats area
which is south of us and therefore in the right direction, so we figured we’d
just continue in that direction after our morning trip and hopefully score the
pintail.
The morning trip was not the
most productive, but it did introduce us to an area we had not previously
birded. The hammock was one of the
most beautiful we’ve visited and promises to be a real find later in the
migration season. We had nice
looks at Palm, Yellowrumps, Black and Whites and best of all, Northern parulas. We had hoped to find some shorebirds
out on the prairie as it is often quite wet and muddy. Well, it was indeed wet and muddy with
more than one of our number sinking in over our not-so-waterproof
footwear. Between the mud, the
cow-pies (the fields are used for cattle grazing) and the large ant hills, it
was like walking through a mine field.
To our dismay, we failed to find much more than several snipe which took
flight in the distance and some distant meadowlarks. Our leader David found a Kestrel perched on the periphery of
the fields which had some of the most striking plumage colorations we’ve seen
this year. Beautiful bird!
The sighting of the day in my
opinion, however, was a Dusky pygmy rattlesnake which was coiled up along the
trailside. It blended in so well
that had it not been spotted by one of our number, the chances were very good
that we would have passed right by or worse, right over the snake. After several minutes of observations
and photos, we left the snake as we found it and moved on.
The afternoon trip down to
Pelican Island turned out to be a bit longer than we had anticipated and
regretfully it was all for naught.
The pond where the White-cheeked pintail had been seen was occupied by a
nice collection of Gadwall, Shovelers, Blue-winged teal, Lesser scaup and a
lone Pied-billed grebe, but there was absolutely no sign of the duck we were
after. Re chases…..some you win
and some you lose. We did find
this beautiful wildflower to photograph, however. It is a Butterfly pea which hugged the ground and added to
the palette provided by the other more common species. Not quite the prize we had hoped for,
but beautiful all the same.
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