From Florida with lifers. February 2024.

What is Florida? Theme parks? Cape Canaveral? Miami Beach? Not even close.

Want to see the truth, the whole picture? Read this story.

Florida can be described as a huge swamp with alligators, surrounded by beautiful beaches with humans. And palm trees everywhere:

I think you get a general idea now. More details to come.

But what makes Florida really great, are Herons. Florida is a Heron country. It's obvious - where there are swamps, there will be Herons, lots of them!

I have counted nine species of herons here, including one lifer. Let's take a brief look at them:

Snowy Egret

Reddish Egret (lifer!)

Tricolored Heron (adult and young):

Great Blue Heron

Green Heron

Little Blue Heron

Great Egret

Plus, two more Herons without photos: Black-crowned Night-heron and Western Cattle Egret.

I'm going to tell my story not in a chronological way, as I usually do, but in the taxonomic one. If you know what I mean. If not, you'll figure it out soon.

Mentioned above Herons are often placed next to the other wading birds, Ibises. There are plenty of them in Florida too.

For example, White Ibises. On the pictures below, white birds are adults and the brown - young. They are pretty common everywhere, often seen near people (lawns, parking lots, lawns near parking lots...).

Another ibis, White-faced Ibis

Roseate Spoonbill (with Tricolored Heron and alligator on the second photo).

And I want to mention another lifer close related to herons, Wood Stork. I don't have a picture of the bird, but I have a photo of a place, where I spotted it from the window of our hotel room!

The narrow ditch behind the bushes - that's where I saw it for the first time. Later, I saw Wood Storks in flight several times, mainly at Florida Keys. A rather ugly-looking bird, but cool.

So, the next bird's family, very Floridian as well, is Waders. Or, as they call them in America, Shorebirds. In total I saw 22 species of them in Florida:

Black-necked Stilt, American Oystercatcher, Black-bellied Plover, Killdeer, Semipalmated Plover, Piping Plover, Wilson's Plover, Snowy Plover, Marbled Godwit, Short-billed Dowitcher, Wilson's Snipe, Spotted Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs, Willet, Greater Yellowlegs, Ruddy Turnstone, Red Knot, Sanderling, Dunlin, Least Sandpiper, Western Sandpiper.

Those two in bold are lifers.

Ok, let's look closer.

Least Sandpiper

Western Sandpiper with Dunlin

Black-bellied Plover, Semipalmated Plover, Piping Plover, Short-billed Dowitchers, Dunlins, Western Sandpipers. All six species at the picture below:

A long-desired lifer, Wilson's Plover! I've missed this bird in Puerto Rico and almost missed it here too. Two birds were hiding in the grass island in the middle of the beach, what a luck!

Red Knots (smaller) and Willets (taller). The blurred birds in the right corner are Sanderlings. Among all are Laughing Gulls (except for the gull with yellow legs, it has to be the Ring-billed Gull...).

Willets and Marbled Godwits (with the reddish belly). Early morning, still sleeping :)

Ruddy Turnstones are not shy at all, they have a spirit of Miami Beach in them!

Next taxonomic neighbours, Cranes and Rails.

Sandhill Cranes

Purple Gallinule

Purple Swamphen

Common Gallinule

American Coot

Another bird from this group, and a lifer, was Limpkin. Didn't take a picture, sorry.

In addition to already mentioned gulls, I'll show some terns, especially Black Skimmers are worth our attention. I saw them at almost every beach, sometimes in significant numbers!

Just look at this white sand!

Ok, at the photo below you can see two more species of terns, Foster's Tern (smaller) and Royal Tern.

I also saw Caspian and Sandwich Terns, so five species of terns in total in Florida.

And now for something completely different - ducks! Well, to be honest, I don't have a lot to say about ducks, I only saw 10 species of them, but among them was a lifer - Mottled Duck!

The first duck photo is of a Blue-winged Duck, male.

The second one too, a pair, with a Little Blue Heron. Don't take me wrong, I call it Little not out of disrespect, it is the official scientific name!

Blue-winged Duck with Little Blue Heron. It looks like we have a bird blues here!

(very funny...)

American Wigeon, female and male.

Mottled Duck - a duck lifer!

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, too straight for a classic duck posture.

Pied-billed Grebes

Another iconic bird of Florida marshes is Anhinga. It looks like a Cormorant and behaves like it too, but they are not related.

Then, two species of pelicans:

White Pelican

and Brown Pelican

Birds of prey (raptors) were represented by ten species: Black Vulture, Turkey Vulture, Osprey, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Northern Harrier, Bald Eagle, Red-shouldered Hawk, American Kestrel, Merlin and Peregrine Falcon.

Red-shouldered Hawk

Peregrine Falcon

And briefly the best of the rest.

Warblers. Some of them:

Pine Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Northern Waterthrush

They have two species of Grackles here: Common Grackle and Boat-tailed Grackle (on the photo below):

Probably the most interesting lifers were Indian Peafowl and Red Junglefowl. I met both of them before (Spain, British Columbia, Puerto Rico), but eBird recognizes them in Northern America as a feral (not domestic) population only in few small ranges. In case of Indian Peafowl it is Southern California and Florida; and as for Red Junglefowl, it's only the Florida Keys (a string of small islands at the tip of Florida, where Hemingway used to live).

That's where I was lucky to see them!

Florida Keys gave me one more lifer, White-crowned Pigeon! This is the only place where these Caribbean species are common, particularly on the Key West Island. I didn't have my camera on me, but I have a picture of the habitat :)