Southern Florida - January 2014

Naples Area (34 avian species)

This area includes the greater Naples city and beaches, but excludes the Eagle Lakes Mitigation Site and Sugden Park that I describe below as separate birding sites. We were staying in the southern part of Naples, not far from Marco Island. I have included short trips to Freedom Park and Serenity Walk Park (several Brown-headed Nuthatchs at this site) as general Naples area locations. There were wading birds everywhere. Yellow-rumped and Palm Warblers were abundant.

Eagle Lakes (57 avian species)

Eagle Lakes (as well as Sugden Park) was only a few miles away from where we were staying, so I made multiple trips there. This park is a local hotspot, and is often overlooked by traveling birders. Behind the ball fields, track, and eutrophic holding pond, there is a berm system around two very productive water reclamation ponds that host wading birds, bitterns, gallinules, swallows, terns and gulls, and many ducks during winter. Native plantings surrounding these ponds encourage the presence of everything from blackbirds to warblers. The water levels in these two ponds was very low this January, and many of the birds that I saw there, including the Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, were far from the perimeter walking paths. However, a beautiful male Painted Bunting perched about ten feet from the walk for several minutes on one of my trips there. On my first trip there this year, a Peregrine Falcon was perched for more than 15 minutes while I took many photos of it. I saw multiple Loggerhead Shrikes on every visit to Eagle Lakes.

Sugden Park (42 avian species)

On my first visit there, I was birding with Andy. It was overcast, cool, and windy. We saw one male and a few female Painted Buntings at a feeder across a canal from the park, and lots of warblers along a short wooded stretch of the walk around the large lake, including Palm, Yellow-rumped, Orange-crowned, Yellow-throated, and Prairie. On my second trip there, it was cool but under bright sunshine. I only saw one Yellow-rumped Warbler and one Palm Warbler, but was treated to a great show of a Basic III sub-adult Bald Eagle chasing an Osprey to take away a fish. I did not add any new species for this site on subsequent trips there.

Marco Island (36 avian species)

I went to Marco Island three times. As soon as I walked onto Tigertail Beach on my first visit there, I got a good series of photos of a Snowy Egret trying to maintain possession of a snake that it had caught. The tide was going out, and I had planned to walk two miles to the end of the peninsula to look for shore birds, but did not realize that the low tide had joined that beach with another beach. When I turned around to go back, I couldn't see any of the high-rise condos at Tigertail Beach - I was four to five miles away, and had a very long hike back! After reviewing my photos at home, I saw that there was a Stilt Sandpiper in a few of my photos.

Harns Marsh (51 avian species)

Harns Marsh is located in the eastern portion of Lee County in Lehigh Acres. In the late 1980’s, the East County Water Control District transformed the 578-acre farmland into an active stormwater facility helping to filter water and reduce flooding to the Orange River. This is a very good birding location, especially for Snail Kites, Limpkins, and Greater Sandhill Cranes. Harns Marsh has two major areas - the first area is adjacent to the elementary and middle schools, and the second area is accessed from 38th street. I had visited the second area twice last year searching unsucessfully for Snail Kites, until Andy went with me to the first area where we saw six of them. Andy and I went there this year, first going to the area near the schools. We soon got some close-up views of a Limpkin, but didn't see any Snail Kites. We walked the approximate four mile trail around this section of the marsh, and it wasn't until we got back to the start when we noticed two adult and one juvenile Snail Kites. Junior then did a flyover near to us for some good flight photos. We also saw four adult and two juvenile Greater Sandhill Cranes, and then a flock of five more flew into the marsh. After getting some good photos, we hiked a good portion of the other section of Harns Marsh, and with 51 avian species seen there that day, we had a good trip to Harns Marsh. A word of caution, though. I have been told that the area where Harns Marsh is located is not the safest of areas, and going there with another birder or in a group might be better than going there alone.

Tamiami Everglades (52 avian species)

This area includes the Tamiami Trail (US Highway 41) from Florida State Road 951 (Collier) at the west end to all the way east through the Everglades to Miami. There are lots of unpaved and a few paved roads off of US41 that are supposed to have good birding. I did a few trips near the west end to Everglades City, Ten Thousand Islands, and some of the minor roads with limited success.

Andy and I headed out along US 41, and stopped at some of the remote, unpaved roads along the way. We saw lots of alligators and some wading birds, including quite a few juvenile Black-crowned Night-Herons. We stopped at a newly constructed restoration site and saw hundreds of wading birds - egrets, ibises, herons, and spoonbills.

I made a second trip to some of the birding sites along US41 and added a few more species to my Everglades bird list for this trip. Alice and I did a Mangrove boat tour, but didn't see any additional species for this area.

Sanibel Island (29 avian species)

Sanibel Island is home to the Ding Darling WMA and the nearby Bailey Tract. I had been invited to present my "Birds of Wintergreen" talk to to the Sanibel-Captiva Audubon Society on the evening of January 16th, so Andy and I decided to make a birding day of it. We stopped first at a large salt marsh on Summerlin Road just before crossing the causeway to Sanibel Island, but only saw a few birds there. We walked a few miles at Bailey Tract, but didn't see very much there. My original plan had been to drive through Ding Darling, but as we had the better part of the afternoon to spend there, we decided to walk the four miles down Wildlife Drive and back along the Indigo Trail. Where were the birds?? We saw very few birds there, and it wasn't until the last half mile when the hike got interesting. We saw a small flock of Roseatte Spoonbills, and then four Black-crowned Night-Herons. We ended the trip's six-hour, almost eight-mile hike, with only 29 species. At least the talk that evening seemed to go well - about 175 people were in the audience.

Boca Raton (35 avian species)

Alice and I spent a weekend with our friends, Brenda and Malcolm Berman, at their condo in Boca Raton, Florida. Malcolm and I did a little birding at two locations there: the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge and the Wokodahatchee Wetlands. The first site has a short Cypress Swamp boardwalk and the Marsh Trail around ten impoundments. We did not see a lot of birds there, and the best bird was a Limpkin. The second site had a quarter-mile long boardwalk through three ponds. There were lots of close-up views of wading birds. The highlights for me were the iguanas and watching a mama Anhinga feeding her two little ones. After returning to Naples I learned that the rare Würdemann's Heron, a cross between the normal and white-morph Great Blue Herons is often seen at the Wokodahatchee Wetlands, and one of my target birds, a Least Bittern, was often seen at the nearby Green Cay - drats! Wish I had known that before going there.

Immokalee Area (36 avian species)

This area includes Bird Rookery Swamp and Corkscrew Swamp. Both of these areas are very good birding locations, but I visited them multiple times last year, and had decided not to go back as there had not been any reports of uncommon or rare birds at these sites. However, there were reports of three Western Kingbirds near to Felda, Florida, just to the north of the town of Immokalee, so Andy and I decided to look for them and then go to the Okaloachoochee Slough State Forest & WMA a little farther to the north and east, as neither of us had ever been to there. We also stopped at the nearby Spirit of the Wind WMA.

When we got to the exact spot where the Western Kingbirds had been reported, we saw all three of them - a life bird for me. We watched them for quite a while as they perched on a power line or fence post, and flew to catch flies and returned to their perches. We had flyovers of a Red-shouldered Hawk carrying a frog, Crested Caracaras, a Northern Harrier, and American Kestrels.

The two WMAs consisted of multiple sandy dirt packed roads, and except for chatting with park rangers on two occasions, we saw no one else there. The boardwalk over a marshy area was closed, and most of the WMAs showed dry and/or tinder-like vegetation. We did see a few birds at the WMAs. Highlights included a Red-headed Woodpecker, three Crested Caracaras, and a few Eastern Meadowlarks.

As we were driving out from one of the trails, I thought that I saw a palm tree branch lying completely across the dirt road - perhaps eight feet long. But as we got right up to it, I saw that it was a snake - rufous-orange with longitudinal yellow stripes. I couldn't stop the car in time, and drove over it, stopped, and then backed up, hoping that I had not killed it, but the snake was nowhere to be seen. I hope that it slithered quickly into the brush while I shifted into reverse, and that it had not decided to make a new home on the underside of my car! I tried researching this snake on the Internet under Florida snakes, but could not find one that matched. It looked like a Garter Snake except for the color and length. Perhaps it was a snake that someone had released??

We stopped at Felda on the way home, and took more photos of the Western Kingbirds. There were reports the next day of not only the three Western Kingbirds at this spot, but also three Scissor-tailed Flycatchers (would have been a life bird) and two Lark Sparrows. Unfortunately, this was at the end of our trip, and it rained the last two days we were there, preventing me from making the hour+ drive there to look for them.

Trip Photos

Additional Photos

For more photos of these and other Florida wildlife species, you may want to link to my Florida trip blogs from 2012 and 2013, or visit my North American wildlife photo pages.

2013 Southwest Florida - 124 avian species
2012 Naples, Florida - 84 avian species
North American wildlife photo pages

You can also visit the web site of my Naples birding pal, Andy Morffew.
Click here to go to Andy Morffew's website

Trip Bird List