After departing from Hal Scott, we made good time to the seashore. Our first stop was a little outlook onto the Haulover Canal, a fairly well known West Indian Manatee viewing location. When we got there, a Birdwatcher's Digest Magazine birding group was there on a tour, and had also stopped to look for Manatees. I talked a little bit to the trip leader, who I have a feeling is someone really famous, or at least locally famous, leading a Birdwatcher's Digest outing and all... Anyways, they said that they hadn't seen any Manatees, but had had a Bonaparte's Gull cruising the canal area earlier, a species I didn't have for the trip yet. After only a few seconds of talking, a Manatee surfaced right in front of us! It only came up for a few seconds, and I only saw it's back, but still, they are a magnificent animal! They're a lot bigger than I thought they would be, and a lot more... barnacle-y.
I didn't have time to switch lenses, so this shot was all I could manage with my 200-500mm
A while after this excitement, the Bonaparte's came by again. So with one mammal lifer, and a new trip bird, we headed to the Black Point Wildlife Drive. The drive is known for it's waterfowl, wading bird and shorebird numbers, as well as variety. The group I had talked to earlier said they had a Reddish Egret here only a few hours earlier, so I thought we had a good chance at this one. We drove fairly quickly, so as not to waste the fairly small amount of daylight left in our day, so most of the stuff we saw along the way was repeats of previous trips. We arrived at a little pull off area, and I quickly spotted a large flock of shorebirds and waders out in one of the lagoons nearby. I scoped through them, and they revealed to be mainly Least Sandpipers, Dunlin and Semipalmated Sandpipers, with a few Greater Yellowlegs mixed in. There was also good sized flock of gulls, with a single Laughing and several Bonaparte's mixed into the Ring-bills. My dad called me over to ask for the camera to take a picture of an unusual Egret. I rushed over, and standing only a few yards in front of us was a Reddish Egret! This was my last (regularly occurring) North American Heron/Egret, so I was pretty happy! It fed for some time in front of us, allowing for awesome pictures.
We kept moving, as our next stop was a reliable Florida Scrub Jay location, but light was fading fast. On the rest of the wildlife drive, we saw another Reddish Egret, a couple Killdeer, and a single Black-crowned Night-heron, among the usual stuff. When we arrived at the seashore access spot, they told us we had less than half an hour before we had to be back out. My parents decided to drive out to the Ocean first, before stopping for Scrub Jays, and I reluctantly agreed, eyeing the dangerously low sun. We sped out to the coast, and watched the sun start to touch on the horizon. A Black-bellied Plover, a Ruddy Turnstone and some Sanderlings. An adult Northern Gannet also came in for a few moments before continuing North! We booted back to the gate, I spotted a medium sized bird perched high up in the scrub on our right. We stopped the car and we were greeted by a family of very inquisitive Florida Scrub Jays! I photographed until the sun was down (which was only a few minutes). Phew! I sure was getting worried, and we'd cut this species pretty darn close! Having the only endemic of the state was a very good feeling :)
These birds were very hard to active and photograph, especially with the setting sun!
So, in summary, on this trip I got 19 lifers and 27 ABA (American Birding Association, basically Canada and the US) lifers, bring my cumulative total up to 328 ABA and 345 life. Awesome!
eBird lists:
Scrub Jays
Seashore
Black Point
Haulover Canal
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