Birding Western Palm County

The western part of Palm County has some great birding spots. All are accessible within an hour's drive of our home in western Broward County. This past weekend, two of my grammar school classmates, Ron and Jack, and their spouses were visiting Florida, and Mary Lou and I had the opportunity to get together with them for a leisurly dinner at Outback Steak House in West Palm Beach. It's hard to believe that seventy years ago, Ron and I were in kindergarten together, and Jack joined us in first grade. We were together all the way through graduation from St Mary High School in Rutherford, New Jersey. We had a grand time swapping stories. We stayed overnight in a Lake Worth motel, and used their visit as an excuse to bird all day on the way up, and all morning on the way back home. Our first objective was Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. This is where both Mary Lou and I saw our lifer Snail Kite and Limpkin on our first visit, in 2002.

Swallow-tailed Kite over Bald Eagle Nest

STA-5: The Mother of all Treatment Ponds

Birds and birders flock to water treatment plants. My first experience with one was the sewage pond at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. It was a green oasis in the otherwise arid desert, chock full of shorebirds. It smelled to high heaven! This one has a modest name, Stormwater Treatment Area Number 5, STA-5 for short, managed by the South Florida Water Management District, and located south of Lake Okeechobee in no-man’s-land of Hendry County. In the middle of the sugar cane fields, STA-5 consists of four large shallow ponds that occupy an area of eight square miles. Audubon of Southwest Florida calls it one of the best birding spots in all of Florida. 
Similar to domestic sewage settling ponds, STA-5 receives waste water and allows impurities to precipitate out and serve as food for millions and billions of trillions of microorganisms, algae and water plants. But unlike urban sewer plants, the source of the water is runoff from Florida’s generous summer rains, and the waste is agricultural effluent from the many farms upstream. Fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides dissolved in the runoff are captured and stored before purified water is released into the Everglades. Phosphorus is the main culprit. The Everglades are historically poor in nutrients, and phosphorus stimulates the growth of cattails that overrun the sawgrass that normally carpets the River of Grass.

A Bobcat in my Birding Patch

When walking in wild places, it is best to expect the unexpected. More often than not, whether searching for a goshawk in the mountains of New Mexico, the Red-headed Woodpecker in my favorite birding patch in Illinois, or a Cottonmouth in the wetlands next to my Florida home, my quest eludes me. Therefore, I keep an open mind and just wait for each new day’s surprise. By South Florida standards, yesterday morning was another in a string of unusually cold days. The temperature was in the low forties, and a brisk breeze blew in from the north. Insects were inactive in the cold. Tree leaves and grasses were swaying, making it difficult to detect subtle movements that might betray small creatures hiding in the foliage. Not a good day for finding birds and butterflies. 
My first stop, as usual, was a patch of mostly exotic shrubbery at the edge of our subdivision, happily left undisturbed by the landscaping contractors. It was decidedly “un-birdy.” Even the usually reliable mockingbirds and gnatcatchers seemed to have shunned it. Then I saw a flash of bright red in a weedy patch just to my left. Too small for a cardinal. It had to be a male Painted Bunting, the only other bird I could expect to see sporting that color. So far, I had never seen a male bunting here, and that would be a nice find. This turned out to be the first of two surprises.

Eagle Nest-building Incident

Observers of our local Bald Eagle nest have noted some interesting behaviors. These are personal discoveries. They gain insights into the lives of these magnificent birds, and it matters not that their findings are not new to science. We learned that, unlike many other birds, the eaglets do not abandon the nest after learning to fly. After their first flight, the adults coaxed the fledglings back to the nest with food. The youngsters returned to be fed at the nest daily for two full months. Sometimes one or both would follow the parent as it carried prey back to the nest.They witnessed interspecific competition, as, for example, when an Osprey, probably distressed after an eagle had stolen its fish, chased the larger raptor back to its nest. The eagle did not endanger its chicks by allowing its pursuer to make a close approach. Instead, the eagle flew off until it eluded the Osprey, then returned to feed the fish to the eaglets. They saw how smaller birds will harass the eagles that roost in their territory by “mobbing” them until they depart. For a video and my photos of grackles ganging up on an immature eagle, 

Hatching On Time

Based upon the eagles' change in behavior, I concluded that the first egg hatched (or began to hatch) around noon on Friday, January 22. These changes, first documented by a veteran observer, were: 1) Incubating adult began resting higher in the nest; 2) Increased movement and changes of position in the incubating adult; 3) Frequent looking down into the nest. Earlier that day, we had found the incubating adult continuously very low in the nest as it usually appeared since incubation began on December 18, 2009. This was the 35th day of incubation, which is also the average length of time it takes a Bald Eagle egg to hatch. The next day, January 23, observers reported more movement, almost restlessness on the part of the incubating/brooding adult, which sat higher (more of its body visible above the nest rim) and kept looking into the nest. Later that day, another experienced observer saw both adults together, looking down into the nest, something we saw last year just after the chick hatched. There is probably a second, and possibly a third egg in the nest, yet to hatch. Since eagles begin incubating as soon as the first egg is laid, and the eggs are deposited about 3 days apart, they hatch out in the order they were laid. This gives the first chick a size and strength advantage over the others. If food its scarce, it will out-compete its nest-mates for nourishment, and they will die of starvation, be evicted or even eaten by the oldest eaglet. 

Frozen Fish and Scavenging Serpents

...The recent Florida cold spell also took a heavy toll on tropical fish. Commercial fish hatcheries that catered to the pet trade suffered huge losses. Introduced species, particularly tilapia and other cichlids floated to the top of canals and lakes. The ditch along the trail in our local birding patch was littered with the corpses of such species. I realized that this was likely the reason why there were so many herons, storks and ibises along the ditch last week, when I walked the "patch"... Turning to another unpleasant subject, I again saw several Cottonmouth Moccasins. One, swimming in the ditch, particularly intrigued me. As I watched, the snake encountered a dead fish. It appeared to "smell" it by resting its chin on it and thrusting out its tongue. Then, to my amazement, the moccasin took the fish into its jaws, shook it, then disappeared briefly under the water. When it surfaced, the snake's mouth was empty. In fact, it opened up its mouth for a moment. Then, the snake moved away, now apparently ignoring the dead fish. Truly, I thought I had witnessed something new to science! Cottonmouths, with their long fangs and poison glands are so well adapted for killing and eating live prey. Why would one display such an interest in the partially decomposed carcass of a fish? as I subsequently learned, the Cottonmouth's scavenging habits are well known to science. Indeed, some populations of this species subsist almost entirely upon fish that are dropped by colonial nesting birds such as herons.

Bobcats and a Moccasin

Twice before on my morning walks I had walked near a certain maple tree and been surprised to see a dark-backed hawk emerge from deep within its leaves. The first time, it flew off so quickly that it was impossible for me to see any details of its plumage or shape, except that it was fairly large and looked almost black. Though it appeared to be a raptor with long rounded wings, it left me a bit puzzled as to its identity, and I did not think about it much after that. Then, last week, I was startled when I flushed a similar raptor out of the same tree. As before, it was a dark bird, quite large, and it was dark above and uniformly light underneath. This time I got a better view, and saw that its head was black, in a pattern almost like the "helmet" of some Peregrine Falcons. However, there was no barring on its breast and its wings were not pointed like a falcon's. About a half hour later I saw my first light morph Short-tailed Hawk making lazy circles above the wetlands.

Only after I got home did I connect the two sightings. It is a bit unusual to find a large raptor hiding in the foliage. Accipiters such as the Sharp-shinned Hawks, and sometimes Cooper's Hawks will hunt that way, hiding in seclusion and darting out to capture a smaller bird. Most Buteos (the group name for many larger hawks such as the Red-tail) seem to prefer perching on an exposed branch that provides a good view of the surrounding area, the better to find rabbits and rodents. However, the Short-tailed Hawk is rarely seen roosting out in the open. It characteristically deep within the brances of a tree, waiting for the ground to warm up and produce thermal currents to loft it effortlessly and allow it to float up very high as it looks for its prey, which consists almost exclusively of other birds.

The roost of the Short-tailed Hawk is notoriously hard to find. Continuing along the trail that borders the west side of the 198th Avenue Canal, I reached the intersection of the path that leads westward, into the heart of the wetlands.During summer it is flooded, but the water receded about a month ago and it was now mostly dry. With my binoculars, I checked out the trail, as it sometimes is occupied by deer and once, a Bobcat. This time, I could make out the figures of one or two Black Vultures on the ground, about a half mile away. Then I thought I saw a four-legged creature just behind the vultures. Keeping to the side of the trail to break up my silhouette, I moved closer very carefully.

Reflections

Yesterday provided a break from a long and record-breaking cold spell in South Florida, with predictions that it will extend well into next week. Our family and friends up north and in the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona may chuckle when we complain about overnight lows in the high 30s and daytime highs that struggle to get out of the 50s. For the first time, after living here for over five years, we finally had to turn on the central heat. The wind chill is expected to dip to the mid 20s tonight. I took advantage of the warmth to get out into our local birding patch. The water conservation impoundment that I call the "West Miramar Environmentally Sensitive Area or Land (ESA or ESL)" is more accurately described as the southeastern corner of the Broward County Water Preserve Area, established under the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Program (CERP), as identified in the federal Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2000.

A Postscript from Father Dan

My father's brother died four weeks ago. Yesterday we received a letter from him. "Now that Father Dan is gone," our eldest daughter had lamented. "there's no one left who will write letters to me." They were frequent correspondents. What they wrote to each other I don't know, but Karen felt a special bond with her great-uncle. At his funeral, others of her generation (he had 69 grand-nieces and nephews) echoed her sentiment-- each felt that he or she was his favorite person in the world. I felt that way too, when, as a teenager, we exchanged trans-oceanic air mail letters. At the very least, each of his friends and relatives received an annual Christmas message. In the old days it was typed out laboriously-- at first, mimoegraphed, later photocopied, complete with strike-throughs and typos. Usually his letter included a personal handwritten addendum. Several years ago, Dan entered the computer world, and this increased his output.

Ivory Gull at Cape May

Late in November the New Jersey Rare Bird Alert reported the sudden appearance of an Ivory Gull in the harbor at Cape May, New Jersey, Only the size of a pigeon and and snow white, this little-known species rarely ventures from the Arctic ice pack, even in winter. I had no idea that I might have a chance to see it. This was only the fifth Ivory Gull ever recorded in New Jersey, the last having been seen in 1986. The Ivory Gull sighting was far from my mind when we received the sad news of the death, in upstate New York, of my late Dad's younger brother, Father Dan Schneider (See: Saying Goodbye . We viewed the weather reports with apprehension, as a strong winter storm was just moving up the northeast coast. My brother, who lives on Great Bay near Atlantic City, New Jersey, talked us into flying into the Atlantic City Airport to stay with him and his wife.

Saying Goodbye

We lost a dear friend and uncle this week. My late Dad's younger brother, Father Dan Schneider, passed away peacefully at Maryknoll, New York, where he was ordained a Catholic priest over 62 years ago. He would have been 92 later this month. As I child, I remember visiting him at the seminary, feeding the pigs, and, in a hedgerow next to the lawn, finding a Chipping Sparrow nest that was constructed entirely of horsehair. Dan was the first graduate of our High School to become a priest, and I swelled with pride at his first Mass in our little stone church in Rutherford, New Jersey. He spent years as a missionary in Korea, and I wrote letters to him, addressing him as something like "Tan-Ya Sawn Sin-Poo."

Long-legged Waders

Our mid-November spell of record hot and humid weather was broken with passage of a cold front. This beautiful sunrise presaged a violent thunderstorm that dumped lots of rain, followed by cooler nights and almost cool to cold (by Florida standards) nights that dipped into the low 50s. The next day, three Wood Storks appeared on our back lawn, the first we have seen in several months. Two were quite young, judging by their still-feathered heads and dusky plumage. This morning, I might have mistaken another white heron for an egret, but noted its bill had a dark tip, typical of an immature Little Blue Heron. As the heron took off, I was too late to get a nice flight shot, but did show that its legs were dark greenish, unlike a Cattle Egret, and it did not have the "golden slippers' of a Snowy Egret. A visit to John U Lloyd Park just happened to coincide with the arrival, in Port Everglades, of the world's largest cruise ship. "The Oasis of the Seas," set to make its maiden voyage on November 28th. At the park, our little granddaughters, visiting from the north, were delighted to find this little Green Iguana, imbibing a Cocoplum fruit.

The Rosy-Finches Have Arrrived at Sandia Crest!

On October 27, 2009, only 10 minutes after a feeder was put in place on the Sandia Crest House deck, four rosy-finches appeared. This was the earliest arrival since we began keeping records in 1999. Keep an eye on the weather and road conditions before setting out on the 13 mile climb to the top. Check out the many links in rosyfinch.com for more information. Within the next week or two, we may expect to see increasing numbers of all three rosy-finch species concentrating at the deck feeder. Keep tuned for schedules of banding sessions, usually conducted on Sunday mornings. Don't miss seeing this stunningly beautiful local PBS documentary about the Sandias that includes a segment on the rosy-finches. The four chapters of this film delve into the cultural, geologic and natural history of the mountain. Chapter One describes the ecology of the Sandias, and features the rosy-finch banding project near the end. There are great views of the birds taken at the Crest House, at the feeders and in the hand, not to mention wonderful photography that makes me really miss my former mountain home!