Five birders joined Brian Rapoza and John Boyd this weekend for the TAS tour to Ft. DeSoto Park in Pinellas County as well as other birding hotspots on Florida’s south and central Gulf coast. Anticipation was high as the group assembled on Friday morning. If the forecast of overnight rains in the Tampa area were correct, Ft. DeSoto could be hopping with migrants on Saturday. Not only that, but a Black-legged Kittiwake, an Arctic gull rarely seen in Florida but discovered at Ft. DeSoto’s Gulf Pier a week earlier, was still being reported there.
Our first birding stop was at Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve in Lee County. Birds seen while exploring the preserve’s boardwalk system included residents such as Wood Duck, Limpkin, Wood Stork, Black-crowned Night-Heron, Roseate Spoonbill, Downy and Pileated Woodpecker, Great Crested Flycatcher, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Tufted Titmouse and Carolina Wren, as well as a few migrants, including Northern Waterthrush, American Redstart, Northern Parula and Black-and-white and Cape May Warbler. Mammals encountered there included an opossum family (with babies riding on mama’s back), a river otter and many gray squirrels.
After lunch near the preserve (a Gray Kingbird was spotted in the restaurant parking lot), we continued north to Celery Fields Regional Stormwater Facility in Sarasota County. First birds seen upon arriving were Purple Martins coming and going from the houses erected for them at the facility’s nature center. A nice selection of birds was observed at the feeders behind the nature center, including Common Ground-Doves, Boat-tailed and Common Grackles, Red-winged Blackbirds, male and female Brown-headed Cowbirds and female Painted Buntings. The stars of the feeder show, though, were a male and female Yellow-headed Blackbird and a male Bronzed Cowbird.
We then walked across the street to a boardwalk overlooking a freshwater marsh. Birds found there included Blue-winged Teal, Purple Gallinule, Gray-headed Swamphen and Glossy Ibis. The Mottled Ducks present there may or may not have had a little bit of Mallard in them. We also visited a second boardwalk, this one located on Raymond Road, along the facility’s western perimeter. Seen here were several Sora, a nesting Black-necked Stilt and a Swamp Sparrow. Driving a couple of miles west of the Celery Fields, we added Sandhill Crane and American White Pelican. As we were leaving, a Least Tern was seen feeding over a roadside pond. Continuing north through heavy late-afternoon traffic on I-75, we finally reached Ellenton in Manatee County, where our hotel for the next two nights was located.
On Saturday morning, the group learned that the Black-legged Kittiwake was no longer present at Ft. DeSoto. Late on Friday, the bird became snagged on a fishing hook at the Gulf Pier and had to be taken to a rehabilitation facility. With that rare bird off the table, we had to focus on the search for migrants at the park. Unfortunately, the forecast overnight rains never materialized, so new arrivals seemed less likely. Leaving our hotel, we heard flocks of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks flying overhead.
Our first stop was at a pond in Tierra Verde, a residential area on the causeway leading to Ft. DeSoto. Birds present there included four Redhead ducks, a Roseate Spoonbill and our first Nanday Parakeets. We then headed to Ft. DeSoto’s North Beach area, spotting several nesting Ospreys along the way. We explored the beach area from several vantage points and found numerous shorebirds, including Black-bellied, Semipalmated and Piping Plover, Marbled Godwit, Ruddy Turnstone, Red Knot, Sanderling, Dunlin, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Short-billed Dowitcher and Willet. Other birds seen in this area included Red-breasted Merganser, Laughing Gull, Least, Royal and Sandwich Tern, Black Skimmer, Magnificent Frigatebird, Reddish Egret and Bald Eagle.
While at North Beach, we also the birded its areas of oak and pine woodland, including in the Arrowhead picnic area. Birds seen in these areas included two young Great Horned Owls, Downy and Pileated Woodpeckers, Great Crested Flycatcher, Common Grackle, American Redstart, Northern Parula and Black-and-white, Hooded, Blackpoll, Palm and Prairie Warblers. After lunch at the snack bar adjacent to the fort, we returned to North Beach, hoping to find Wilson’s and Snowy Plovers at a roped-off area at the south end of the beach. Among the hundreds of Black Skimmers, terns, gulls and shorebirds congregating there, we found Ring-billed and Lesser Black-backed Gulls, but neither of our target plovers,
Our next stop was the mulberry tree area near the Bay Pier. This area, which includes a water feature installed to provide songbirds with water for drinking and bathing, often attracts large numbers of migrants. On our visit, the only migrants we found there were Common Yellowthroat and Black-and-white and Prairie Warblers. We then drove to the turnaround at the end of East Beach, where we found a few shorebirds, all of them species seen earlier in the day. At adjacent East Beach woods, we met a couple exiting one of the trails, who told us that they saw little in the way of migrants in this area of the park. They also told us that while at Arrowhead picnic area earlier in the afternoon, they saw a few birds not yet seen by us, including Kentucky and Black-throated Blue Warbler, so we decided to pay that area another visit. We didn’t find the Kentucky Warbler, but we did see the Black-throated Blue Warbler as well as a Cape May and Black-throated Green Warbler.
While at Arrowhead, we met birders who told us about a Prothonotary Warbler they saw in a oak grove we visited in the morning at North Beach. We paid that location another visit but couldn’t find the Prothonotary. Before leaving the park and heading back to our hotel, we made a stop at the Gulf Pier, where we found one last new bird, a Loggerhead Shrike. Bottle-nosed Dolphin were seen from the pier.
After breakfast on Sunday morning, we checked out of our hotel and began the return drive to Miami. Our first stop was at Nokomis Beach in Sarasota County, home for the past several years to a House Crow, a species native to southern Asia. It’s not known exactly how this crow arrived in Florida; the most likely explanation is that it hitched a ride on a cargo ship. Unfortunately, only Fish Crows were seen during our visit, so we moved on to our next stop, Oscar Scherer State Park, just a short drive on US 41 from Nokomis. In scrub habitat at the east end of the park, we found our target bird for this stop, a Florida Scrub-Jay. Other birds tallied while there included Bald Eagle, Downy and Pileated Woodpecker, White-eyed and Blue-headed Vireo, Tufted Titmouse, House and Carolina Wren, Eastern Towhee and Painted Bunting.
We paid another quick visit to Nokomis Beach, but the House Crow was still a no-show. Continuing south, we next visited Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management Area in Charlotte County. Our target birds there were pine flatwoods specialists including Northern Bobwhite, Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Eastern Bluebird, Pine Warbler and Bachman’s Sparrow. We saw the nuthatch, bluebird and warbler and heard the bobwhite but couldn’t find the woodpecker and sparrow. Common Nighthawk and Eastern Meadowlark were also heard during our visit. White-tailed Deer was the last new mammal seen on the tour.
Our final stop of the tour was the Belle Meade Horse Trail at Picayune Strand State Forest in Collier County. This location provided another opportunity for Red-cockaded Woodpecker, but once again, this species eluded us. We saw five other woodpeckers while there: Red-headed, Red-bellied, Piliated Downy and Northern Flicker. Other birds seen during our visit included Common Ground-Dove, Swallow-tailed Kite, Bald Eagle, Great Crested Flycatcher and Brown-headed Nuthatch.
By tour’s end, we had observed a total of 113 bird species and 5 mammals. An eBird trip report, including checklists for each stop, is here.