I spontaneously decided after TAing on Friday that I wanted to spend my birthday weekend with Peter and drove up that evening. Saturday morning was Arbor Day in Tallahassee, with a community-wide tree planting event taking place at Lake Elberta (for those unfamiliar with Lake Elberta, read more about its amazing transformation here).
In all honesty, I spent the majority of that morning searching for a 'reliable' Wilson's Warbler, that had been hanging out there for a few weeks, but evidently took off just a day or two before my arrival. We did get a Spotted Sandpiper, which we needed for the year.
We had plans to attend the annual fire festival, this year held at Austin Cary Memorial Forest in Gainesville. Unfortunately, we left Arbor Day a bit late and didn't make the festival. We headed over to Sweetwater Wetlands Park to try for a Clay-colored Sparrow and a Yellow-breasted Chat that had both been seen there over the past several days. Our friend Derek joined us. After spending several minutes looking for the elusive sparrow by the overflow parking lot, we noticed something really strange. A foraging Limpkin had something large in its bill, but it wasn't an apple snail. We focused our binoculars to view this Limpkin struggling to eat an eastern mud turtle! It swam across the pond, carrying it in its bill, until it reached a more vegetated area, where it dropped it and spent several seconds swinging its bill in the water to find it again. This continued for several minutes - the Limpkin would drop it, find it, pick it up, and drop it again until it finally could not find the turtle and receded back to its partner on the other side of the pond. Growing up in south Florida, I've seen many a Limpkin, but I've never witnessed one attempting to eat a turtle!
We headed towards the boardwalk to see several wading birds and gallinules. We stopped in an area that looked like great rail habitat, and luckily enough, there was a Sora, one of two we'd see that day. The Soras were plodding along with their chicken-like walk across the dense swamp vegetation, bobbing their cute-as-a-button bunny tails as they meandered about. We also got a great look at a gorgeous American Bittern, which was standing in a peculiar position right by the edge of the boardwalk. Its was crouched over with fluffed plumage, and its eyes were hauntingly fixated on something in front of it. We were quite close, but it didn't seem the least bit disturbed by our presence. I'd never seen an American Bittern behave in this way.
Continuing along, we saw dabbling Blue-winged Teals, dueling Great Egrets, and aerobatic Tree Swallows navigating the sky for insects. Another highlight was witnessing two regal Snail Kites hunting for snails. One successfully captured a snail, and we put our scope on to see the perched kite shredding the meat out of the shell with its thick, de-curved bill, and strong talons. Snail Kites will always remain one of my favorite raptors for their pure resilience; in only a few generations, their bills have rapidly evolved to their new prey item: invasive apple snails, which are larger than the native ones. Yeah, they're awesome, but I digress.. Right before we left, we finally got a glimpse of the Yellow-breasted Chat hiding in a brushy thicket right by the car amongst Chipping Sparrows, Song Sparrows, and two gregarious Brown Thrashers.
Our day wasn't over yet! We headed to the University of Florida campus to catch a glimpse (quite literally) of a very rare west coast vagrant. A group of 5 Vaux's Swifts decided to take up residence in a freshman dorm on the campus. As the sun was setting, our eyes were peeled on the chimney. I saw two dark flashes of movement head right into the chimney, with no hesitation. Sitting several feet from Peter and Derek, I yelled "Did you see that?! That was them!" To which Peter replied "Are you kidding me, I coughed and missed it." Luckily, there were still two more that hadn't made it to the chimney, and we all saw them. Despite it being an awesome lifer, a feeling of disappointment lingered, as the glimpse was so quick, we were barely able to study the bird. We were essentially relying on other bird experts who had ID'd them before us. I give credit to the first person who actually identified them...
We headed to grab a quick bite with my brother and his girlfriend, both UF students and then journeyed back to Tallahassee to enjoy the evening amongst friends and brews at our favorite local brewery, Fermentation Lounge.
The next morning was my birthday and nature's gifts to me were lifer Rusty Blackbirds! We had spent a few minutes at Lake Elberta trying for the Wilson's again with no luck, so we headed to Lake Henrietta, where we had been seeing reports for Rustys. With a backlit sky, it took us a moment to distinguish them, but their gorgeous, piercing yellow eyes was a great giveaway. Rusty blackbird populations are crashing quickly, and I felt lucky to spend a few minutes watching this small flock foraging on trees, and mixing with American Robins and Cedar Waxwings. The rest of the afternoon was spent wading in shallow swamps, flipping logs, and sifting mud to herp with an out-of-town herper around Lake Bradford. We saw several beautiful species of salamanders, including nests and eggs! And to wrap up the day, we got our year Black-and-White Warbler after seeing very low bird diversity during the afternoon.
We ate a delicious lunch at my favorite spot in Tallahassee, Sweet Pea, said our goodbyes, and I headed back up to Athens. We were able to rack up several species during our short weekend!
Happy birding,
Heather
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