Tri-County birding

Friday night, a few of Rosana's teacher-friends, as well as Danny, Rosana, and I played some games and had some delicious polenta over here. Catch Phrase and beers. Saturday morning I woke up quite early and went to Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne. It didn't open until 8am, so I attempted to kill an hour at one of the Crandon Park beaches. This proved really fruitful, as on the beach, there was a large flock of birds that included ROYAL TERN, CASPIAN TERN, BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER, SEMIPALMATED PLOVER, PIPING PLOVER, SANDERLING, and LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL. On the walk back to the car, EASTERN SANDHILL CRANES yelled at me.


At 8am, I headed to the state park, and attempted to bird it. There was not much going on, besides these soaring MAGNIFICENT FRIGATEBIRDS.


At about 10:30, Rosana and Emily met me there to enjoy some beach time. It was pretty fun and relaxing. In the afternoon we took a long nap, and then headed to Titanic for delicious microbrews, and some billiards with Emily and Desiree.


Sunday morning, Rosana and I slept in (7:30), and slowly got ready for a northward trip. On our way to Palm Beach, we stopped at the infamous Dania Beach 800 building for my third try at a SMOOTH-BILLED ANI this year. We immediately saw one, and got incredible looks at it. I think this kind of redeems me as an actual pro-circuit birder in Rosana's eyes. Maybe.


In the afternoon, we hung out at Eva's friends' house where they were having a cook-out. We enjoyed some horseshoes, flip-cup, and this amazing game called Ladder Ball. We took a break from the party to bird the beach before sundown, but with no peculiar sightings. Eva and I went to bed early that night as we had a well-planned day for Monday.


At 8am on Monday, Eva and I picked up Kim in Lake Worth, and headed to Eva's own Green Cay Nature Center. On our morning bird walk, we saw a good variety of species, including PURPLE GALLINULE, MERLIN, BLACK-BELLIED WHISTLING DUCK, ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER, YELLOW-THROATED WARLBER, and SORA. Eva identified a NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW that I was not able to spot due to an aggressive shirtless jogger. To give Eva some time to get work done, Kim and I went down the street to the Wakodahatchee Wetlands. Not too much more was seen here, but a beautiful day nonetheless. Extremely irrratably and hungrily, we met up with Eva and Mo at Green Cay and ate lunch at a Chinese Restaurant. After lunch, Mo, Kim, and I hiked a fruitless death march through the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge trying to turn up one of their resident SNAIL KITE, but it was not to be. After Eva's work day was done, they dropped me off at the train to head back down to Miami, with 60 bird species on the day.


This morning I went to A.D Barnes here in Dade to see if there were any late migrants. Not too much other than a GREAT-CRESTED FLYCATCHER, BLUE-HEADE VIREO, 2 CHESTNUT-FRONTED MACAW, and this overly friendly juvenile raccoon.