The long-toed Purple Gallinule, the perfect lily pad bird, is common in south Florida wetlands. Photo: Chris Wood
Late April is a wonderful time to visit South Florida. Migrants augment the resident birds, and all of South Florida’s special breeding birds have arrived. We’ll visit the most interesting of the everglades, pine forests, prairies, and cypress swamps in peninsular South Florida, including Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, and Everglades National Park.
The Keys are at their best at this time of year as well, and we’ll explore areas known to us looking for the sought-after Mangrove Cuckoo and other Key’s specialties. We’ll also take a day trip to the Dry Tortugas. Even though we’ll have just four hours on Fort Jefferson, it’s enough time to appreciate the magnificent seabird colony and to see most of the birds for which the area is justly famous. We’ll conclude in the Miami area, where elements of a huge parrot fauna have become naturalized. Add the chance at a vagrant from the Caribbean, and it’s easy to see why South Florida in late April is such a popular destination.
Day 1: The trip begins this evening near Fort Myers.
Day 2: We’ll leave early to drive north to Port Charlotte and the Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management area, a large tract of Slash Pine and marsh whose inhabitants include the celebrated pinewoods trio of Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Brown-headed Nuthatch, and Bachman’s Sparrow. Sandhill Cranes nest in the area, and roadside ditches sometimes hold Limpkin and King Rail. Just a bit north, on the outskirts of Punta Gorda, several clusters of the curious and social Florida Scrub-Jays have prospered for years and we’re almost certain to find them. We’ll bring peanuts to pay for the privilege.
It’s hard to know exactly how much time it will take to find and fully absorb these four North American endemics. If we accomplish our goals with dispatch, we may travel south and spend the afternoon in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary (see Day 3 for a description). Or if we’re well into the afternoon before leaving the jays, we’re return to Fort Myers, stopping at various wetlands en route, some of which often hold Snail Kites. It would be surprising not to see Swallow-tailed Kite, too. Night in Fort Myers.
Day 3: We’ll leave early for Corkscrew Swamp, a delightful National Audubon Society sanctuary with an elevated boardwalk (some of which your leader helped build!) winding through stands of Bald Cypress to a sawgrass marsh. Depending on water levels, Wood Storks may still be in residence, and we’ll almost certainly see Swallow-tailed Kites patrolling the cypress tops. Assuming adequate water levels, there will be a wide variety of wading birds, possibly including Purple Gallinule, and the cypress overhead should support Barred Owl, Pileated Woodpecker, and a collection of warblers perhaps including Yellow-throated. Corkscrew is an experience as much as a birding spot, and it’s at its best early or late, so we’ll try to arrive when the sanctuary opens.
After a picnic lunch at Corkscrew, we’ll drive south and east across the Everglades, looking for Snail Kites as we go, to Florida City and the gateway to Everglades National Park. If time allows, we’ll visit the northern part of the park in the late afternoon. If we were able to visit Corkscrew the afternoon of the previous day, we’ll spend our additional hours in the Park. Night in Florida City.
Day 4: We’ll drive to Flamingo, the terminus of Everglades National Park’s main road, stopping at such well-known places as Anhinga Trail, where the common glades residents are often just a few feet off the boardwalk, and Mahogany Hammock with its collection of tropical hardwood trees, colorful land snails, and often a collection of migrant warblers. At Flamingo, we’ll scan mudflats for shorebirds and terns, possibly including Marbled Godwit and Gull-billed Tern among many others. Eco Pond, a few hundred feet from the end of the road, has a small island favored by roosting waterbirds often including Roseate Spoonbill and White Ibis, and the pond itself often has a surprise or two.
We’ll return to Florida City midday to check out of our hotel and start the 120-mile drive to Key West, making a few stops along the way before arriving in the late afternoon. We’ll eat dinner early, then venture out again at dusk to look for and listen to Antillean Nighthawk. Night in Key West.
Day 5: We’ll sail at 7:30 am for the Tortugas aboard the Yankee Freedom II. Our route will take us swiftly and directly to the Tortugas, where we’ll arrive in the late morning. We’ll have about four hours to watch the great Sooty Tern and Brown Noddy spectacle, to look for Black Noddy and other rarities, and to thoroughly search Fort Jefferson for migrants that can include thrushes, buntings, orioles, and up to 20 species of warbler. The Tortugas inevitably produce surprises: Cave Swallows around the battlements of the fort, perhaps a Chuck-will’s-widow inside the old powder magazine, or a Short-eared Owl perched in one of the trees on the parade ground. We’ll return to Key West in mid-afternoon, arriving about 5:00 pm. Night in Key West.
Day 6: Among the principal landbird attractions of the Lower Keys, White-crowned Pigeon and Black-whiskered Vireo are widespread and conspicuous. Mangrove Cuckoo, however, is neither, and we’ll spend the morning on Sugarloaf Key looking for this handsome bird. In some years we’ve had good views of cuckoos within just 15 minutes of exiting our vehicles; in others we don’t see them at all. Elsewhere in the Keys we’ve often seen “Cuban” or “Golden” Yellow Warbler, a subspecies group that may be destined for full-species status, and we’ll look for this specialized bird, too. We’ll continue up the Keys, stopping at shorebird roosts or migrant traps along the way. As the tour winds down, we’ll search for any rarities that might be present in the area, or end the day watching parrots fly to roost in Miami. Night in Miami.
Day 7: This will be a flexible day. We’ll look for species that we might have missed, such as Snail Kite and Smooth-billed Ani, and we’ll also look for well-established exotics such as Red-whiskered Bulbul and Spot-breasted Oriole. There may also be rarities, such as Western Spindalis, within relatively easy striking distance, and we’ll add them to the mix when determining how to spend this day.
Day 8: The tour concludes this morning at Miami International Airport.
Updated: 06 July 2009
Prices
- 2010 price about $2,680
- Single Occupancy Supplement $520
- 2011 price not yet available
Notes
Maximum group size seven with one leader, 14 with two leaders.