10,000 Birds

MARCH 8, 2011

home about advertise archives birds conservation contact galleries links reviews subscribe Browse: Home / Birds / The plovers of Estero Lagoon, Florida The plovers of Estero Lagoon, Florida By James • March 8, 2011 • 1 comment Tweet Share For as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by shorebirds.

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Florida South Africa 2011 Africa 220

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 18, 2012

Cloud, Florida, Doug, with whom I had been birding all day long, found a Yellow-throated Warbler foraging behind us. The Yellow-throated Warbler is a wood-warbler that breeds almost exclusively in the southeastern United States. They winter in Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 2, 2014

It is also a good description of the birding in southernmost Florida. Sure, Miami and the Florida Keys do not boast any endemics ( ‘Cape Sable’ Seaside Sparrow is close) at the species level. Many visitors who come through Orlando or Tampa see maybe eight or ten species on a winter trip.

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Florida Miami Stray United States 174

10,000 Birds

JULY 24, 2012

If you have been out birding in southeast Florida there is a good chance that you have run into him in the field. Over twenty species of wood-warbler may be recorded in a single winter in Miami-Dade County, with several more species recorded regularly in Monroe and Broward. That’s right.

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10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 19, 2016

Take the Florida Scrub-Jay. Photo above by Louise Hunt, courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology) At just about 5,000 individuals, Florida’s only exclusive endemic is Endangered. And with the bird’s oak scrub habitat rapidly disappearing , scientists are searching for ways to preserve the species.

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Florida California Hunting Research 177

10,000 Birds

MAY 16, 2014

Although many South Florida specialties can be seen throughout the year such as White-crowned Pigeon and Snail Kite , most visiting birders decide to come in the months of April and May in search of summer migrants or secretive birds that only vocalize during the breeding season. Migration starts very early in the sunshine state.

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Florida Miami Bahamas Breeders 157

10,000 Birds

MAY 24, 2020

North America is home to many amazing bird species, including several which require a special effort to see and appreciate. In the summer, they are the highest altitude breeding songbird in North America. Due to their beauty and warbling song, poachers trap these buntings in South Florida for an illegal local cagebird trade.

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10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

Sure, we also have Common Myna and Boat-tailed Grackle which would be pretty special to most who do not live in Florida. Gray Kingbird perched on a Gumbo Limbo Tree, another typical West Indian species native to South Florida. By the end of September, the territorial birds that breed in the local parking lots are gone.

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Dominican Republic Puerto Rico Miami Florida 242

10,000 Birds

JUNE 4, 2013

Broward County has one of the highest densities of Burrowing Owls in Florida. The Florida sub-species of Burrowing Owl is now classified as a threatened species in Florida and it is one of the rarest sub-species of Burrowing Owls. This is unfortunately an all too common problem for these owls in Florida.

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Owls Florida Raised Coyotes 251

10,000 Birds

JULY 5, 2013

I always like to see the look of surprise on a visiting birder’s face when I tell them that the Prairie Warblers and Yellow Warblers in southern Florida are restricted to mangrove habitats. Everyone, I would like you to meet the ‘Florida’ Prairie Warbler ( S. Petersburg area on the west coast.

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Florida Miami Breeders Tampa 211

10,000 Birds

JULY 24, 2014

Miami, Florida has a reputation among the birding community for being overrun with exotic bird species. However, the typical birding experience for someone down here also includes a large menagerie of other species such as Orange-winged Parrot , Mitred Parakeet , Egyptian Goose and Nutmeg Mannikin. It is well-deserved.

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10,000 Birds

JULY 3, 2014

I was happy to read that the wood stork ( Mycteria Americana ), a bird near and dear to me, was down-sited from the status of endangered to threatened species. Fish and Wildlife Service is down-listing the wood stork from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). However, birds in the U.S. Photo: U.S.

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North Carolina Bald Eagle South Carolina Florida 225

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 30, 2014

There’s a new proposal before the American Ornithologists’ Union’s North American Classification Committee to split Painted Bunting into two species (yay! — maybe, more later) and to name the new species “Eastern Painted Bunting” and “Western Painted Bunting” (no!).

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10,000 Birds

MAY 2, 2016

Of course, I contacted Carlos Sanchez , alleged south Florida birder extraordinaire, to maximize the returns on what time I could spend. We immediately headed to an undisclosed location where Carlos had breeding Mangrove Cuckoos staked out. We needed countable species! Let me get out of the car before making me look at birds!

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Florida Miami Birds Owls 139

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

Over the last weekend, I was at Lake Kissimmee in Florida, observing Snail Kites at an area kites were not present or rare just a few years ago. The threat of extinction of such iconic Florida bird prompted State and Federal agencies to find solutions to stop and reverse the declining trend. Kites now nest there and are fairly common.

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10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

The Purple Swamphen now is considered a superspecies, with each of its six races are designated full species – and in the strange world of birding, a superspecies is rather less than a species, not more. This is despite the most likely African origin of the species. Swamphen yes, but Grey-headed? Again: Grey-headed?

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APRIL 29, 2014

Despite our near constant doom-and-gloom prognostications we still manage to see wood-warblers, though most of April is spent looking at the several species that are early arrivals, mostly species that winter in the southeastern United States and therefore can get back to we northeasterns rather quickly.

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10,000 Birds

APRIL 19, 2013

He now wakes up to the choruses of Northern Cardinals and Northern Mockingbirds in sunny Vero Beach, Florida. This photo could have been taken in Florida’s Treasure Coast during the winter months or in South America during the same period. And by similar, I mean the species and abundance of shorebirds and gulls.

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Chile Peru South America Florida 209

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 23, 2016

Florida Caverns State Park is known for one, quite obvious thing: the caverns. This fall, I stopped at Florida Caverns with two friends who had never visited before. This tiny species breeds north of Florida but returns to spend the winter here as well as in Central and South America.

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FEBRUARY 11, 2014

This is perhaps the best place in Florida to find a rare gull for the state and though I had no luck picking a vagrant California Gull out of the teeming hordes I did enjoy myself as much as I did back in 2012. But my failure to find a rare species doesn’t mean that I saw nothing of note.

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10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 13, 2012

Nonetheless, this bird is one of the most interesting species in the avifauna of southeast Florida for many reasons — an interesting biology that parallels that of several pigeon species in the Old World Tropics as well as its limited distribution in the state.

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10,000 Birds

JANUARY 29, 2015

The invasive Burmese Python ( Python molurus ) is well established in the Florida Everglade. Another species of Python, the African Python ( Python sebae ) has established a small population in the 2,877-acre Bird Drive Area (BDA) in South Florida. Photo Credit: Invasive and Exotic Species of North America (www.invasive.org).

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Pythons Florida Mammals Reptiles 196

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 18, 2012

There I found a study which showed that the ingenious little birds had found a protein source that allowed them to coincide their breeding with times of man-made, rather than natural seasonal abundance. For example, the Nutmeg Munia, Lonchura punctulata , has managed to maintain a presence in California and Florida for some years.

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10,000 Birds

MARCH 20, 2019

Lying just a few miles north of the entrance to Madera Canyon, is Florida Canyon. Occasional spots of dense willows add additional cover for some species, while just a few yards away, you can find open, grassy areas, as well as patches of Ocotillo, and Prickly Pear Cactus. The post Florida Canyon, A not so secret hotspot!

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10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

The brilliant orange coloration and rich, haunting song of the Spot-breasted Oriole ( Icterus pectoralis ) makes this species one of my favorite permanent residents in southeastern Florida, even though it is an introduced exotic. How can an introduced species be a favorite among birders?

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Miami Costa Rica Florida 2005 186

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 23, 2012

Southern Florida offers many unique wintering birds, but perhaps none more so then the sparrows that call different parts of Florida their winter homes. The flight shot of the male Eurasian, taken by Tom Dunkerton, shows the unique plumage that is completely diagnostic to that species. Check out some of these other wigeon shots.

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South Dakota Florida Sparrows Wildlife 179

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 11, 2015

I have now officially moved to the Emerald Coast of Florida, a beautiful region on the Florida Panhandle. I am within one of Florida’s sub-tropical zones, and my birding experiences have expanded, with life birds galore. The largest of the three species was the Ruddy Turnstone , in between its breeding and non-breeding plumage.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 21, 2013

On a recent filming trip to Emeralda Marsh in Lake County Florida we managed to film and photograph a suspected hybrid between a Tricolored Heron and a Snowy Egret. Hybrids between separate species are rare. Suspected hybrids between heron species, whilst extremely rare, have been documented for some time.

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Arizona Florida Cattle California 189

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 29, 2013

“Out West” to most Floridians might mean California or Arizona or might even refer to the Gulf Coast of Florida. These two water management wetlands are amongst the very best birding and photography locations in south Florida. And this is where magic happens from time to time. If not THE best.

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Factory North America Alligators Trafficking 246

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

Pelagic birding off the Atlantic coast of Florida can be a frustrating experience, usually involving long waits of up to an hour or more interspersed with brief flurries of activity — a far cry from pelagic birding off of coasts blessed with cold water currents and nutrient rich upwelling such as California, southeast Australia, and Peru.

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Florida United States Fish 2005 171

10,000 Birds

APRIL 10, 2015

In February of 2013, I wrote a piece outlining my thoughts on which exotic bird species should be added to the American Bird Association (ABA) checklist. My number one choice at the time was Egyptian Goose ( Alopochen aegyptiacus ), an adaptable sheldgoose from Africa that was rapidly becoming established in peninsular Florida.

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10,000 Birds

MARCH 26, 2012

In fact, prior to my visit to Florida in January for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival, I had never seen an Anhinga at all save one lousy look in Honduras back in 2009. I must of mistaken flying Anhingas for ten different species over the next few days and I never really adjusted to seeing a cormorant-like bird soaring.

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Florida Honduras Turkey Wildlife 180

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 25, 2021

A lot of birds take a shorter trip to Florida and the Caribbean, many spend the winter in southern Mexico, and some species even fly all the way to southern Amazonia (this drink is for you Veerys). This tail bobber is a common species of mangroves and any other wet spot in the lowlands. Cloud Forest near San Ramon.

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Costa Rica Kentucky Louisiana Parrots 259

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

Spoonbills and ibises are stocky, colorful wading birds with distinctive bills: downcurved and pointed in the case of ibises, flat and paddle shaped in the spoonbills (above is my shot of Roseate Spoonbills ( Platalea ajaja ) near a breeding colony in Louisiana). White Ibis ( Eudocimus albus ) in Florida © David J.

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Louisiana Mississippi America Pelicans 224

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 17, 2012

It is one of several species in the Mallard -complex of ducks, along with American Black Duck , Mexican Duck , and quite a few others. You find them in the south from Florida to Texas and down into Mexico, occasionally as far north as the Carolinas in the east and up the Mississippi River as far north as Illinois.

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Ducks Illinois Florida Mississippi 182

10,000 Birds

MARCH 3, 2012

And there were several birds, often feeding close to shore, much different from my first encounter with the species along another fabled wildlife drive, the one at Brigantine in New Jersey. They do tend to wander after breeding which explains my first encounter with that New Jersey bird. Nothing, that’s what.

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Wildlife New Jersey South America United States 205

10,000 Birds

MARCH 31, 2014

We assembled at nine in the morning in a small parking lot outside the naval base in Key West, Florida. The park is home to not one, not two, but large three colonies of breeding seabirds: the Brown Noddy , Magnificent Frigatebird , and Sooty Tern. Dry Tortugas National Park: Bird Banding Sooty Terns. Lots and lots of birds.

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