Florida Vacation and Winter Migrants

We took a vacation to Florida from Oct. 7 to Oct. 14 and really had a great time. I didn't do much birding there except to watch what was around the resort and a very little bit at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. With little effort, I did add two life birds to my list - Smooth-billed Ani (#370) and Florida Scrub Jay (#371). I didn't expect the Smooth-billed Ani, but four flew overhead calling which I was able to match up with the song from the Stokes CD that has bird songs for the eastern U.S. The Florida Scrub Jay is an endangered bird that occurs only in Florida. They need periodic fire to sweep across the land to keep the scrub habitat low. Before modern-day fire prevention, fires would clear the land once every two to five years. Now we don't allow wildfires, so much of the jay's habitat has been lost. The people at Merritt Island NWR periodically set controlled burns which keeps the habitat intact for the jays. I had to walk about 1/2 mile along a trail before I finally saw them. Two of them were flying from the ground to the top of a dead tree. When I stopped to look at them through my binoculars, about a million mosquitoes found my legs! We could see the Kennedy Space Center from the refuge, and I could see Space Shuttle Discovery on the launch pad waiting for its Nov. 1 launch. That was pretty exciting! Merritt Island NWR also is a place where Florida manatees are pretty common, so we went to one of the places where they frequent called Haulover Canal. Unfortunately, the manatees didn't cooperate with us and we didn't get to see them. In all of Florida, there were more Anhingas than I've ever seen. It seemed like there was one on every little pond we would pass. The resort where we stayed was built on a large lake with a couple of small ponds on the grounds. Great Blue Herons, Little Blue Herons and Great Egrets frequented the ponds. One day a couple of Wood Storks were probing the mud on one of the ponds. I wish I had more time to go birding, but it was fun in what little time I had.

The winter migrants continue to filter in here on our property. I went into the woods to mount my BirdCam on Friday evening and heard a Northern Flicker calling. On Saturday morning as I was leaving for work, an Eastern Phoebe called from the power lines in my front yard. I'm just waiting to see the Chipping Sparrows show up at my feeders and the Yellow-rumped Warblers to show up in the trees. According to reports on Texbirds (a birding listserv for Texas), Red-breasted Nuthatches are showing up in Texas. We don't get a lot of them every year, so this year seems like it could be an irruption year for them. If I could get one on my feeders in the woods, it would be a new property bird for me.