Florida
Heatherlea Guide: Pete Cosgrove with another from the Heatherlea team.
Group size: 12
Florida
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Day 1 – Arrival (night at Homestead)
Arrive in Miami and drive to Homestead, our base for the first two days. Check into our rooms, freshen-up and have dinner. In the evening, we will go for a short, leisurely birding walk around the outskirts of Homestead. This will be our first chance to catch up with some of the commoner Floridian species.
Day 2 – Everglades (night at Homestead)
The most amazing and awe inspiring of North American wetland site, this National Park is amazing both in terms of its birds, Alligators and scale (1.5 million acres). The huge flat wetland expanses disappear into the distance from horizon to horizon. The road climbs in a few places, reaching the dizzy heights of 3-4 feet above sea level!
We will spend a full day in the Everglades here, searching for waterbirds as well as the many passerines that occur in the surrounding vegetation. Target species in the ‘river of grass’ include Anhinga, Great Blue, Tri-coloured, Little Blue, and Green Heron, Black-crowned and Yellow-crowned Night Heron, Snowy Egret, White Ibis, Wood Stork and perhaps Roseate Spoonbill. As we drive around the park we will be looking for exciting raptors such as Red-shouldered Hawk, Short-tailed Hawk, Bald Eagle and perhaps the world’s most beautiful and graceful bird of prey, the Swallow-tailed Kite.
Day 3 – Tamiami Trail. the Loop Road and Corkscrew Swamp (night at Naples/Sanibel)
Leaving early the next morning we will drive west through the Everglades along the famous Tamiami Trail. The vast flat areas of sawgrass along this route offer us our best chances of the rare Snail Kite. We will take a slight detour on to the fantastic Loop Road, where it feels if we have stepped back in time into a Johnny Cash song. With wooden houses on stilts, this back road feels very different from modern America. The Loop Road is lined with huge buttressed trees, festooned with Spanish Moss and is one of the first areas of tall broadleaved trees tired migrants reach after making landfall in the mangroves and sawgrass. Consequently, this road is a superb place to see migrant warblers, vireos, thrushes and flycatchers. It is also excellent for woodpeckers, Wild Turkeys and other exciting residents, including being one of last refuges for the endangered Florida Panther…
We will stop for breakfast, before heading to Corkscrew Swamp, a great place to get inland Florida species which can be hard to see in the Everglades. This is one of the last large areas of Bald Cypress trees and associated species left in Florida and is particularly good for Swallow-tailed Kite, Wood Stork, Limpkin, Yellow-throated Warbler and the huge Pileated Woodpecker. A fantastic boardwalk loops through superb habitat, making the birding feel easy and safe.
Day 4 – Sanibel Island (night near Homestead)
The Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island is one of the best places for waders, waterbirds and migrants in Florida and we will spend the morning here. The fantastic birdwatching drive has a series of superb stopping places in front of heronries and shore bird marshes. There are several short birdwatching trails which provide ample distractions. During the spring, the bushes on Sanibel Island can be dripping with migrant songbirds.
The marsh and foreshore areas should be full of birds and our targets here will include Reddish Egret and their skittish dancing, Roseate Spoonbill, Black Skimmer, Killdeer, Wilson’s and Semi-palmated Plover, Least, Western, Solitary, Spotted and Stilt Sandpiper, Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs, Willet, American Oystercatcher and a host of terns. In the afternoon we will drive back to Homestead.
Day 5 – Florida Keys
Leaving Homestead before breakfast, we will head down into the Keys and begin birding our way south. We will stop at several mangrove and wooded areas (‘hardwood hammocks’) and look for local specialities such as Mangrove Cuckoo, Black-whiskered Vireo, White-eyed Vireo, Palm and Prairie Warblers. The mangroves are the haunt of White-crowned Pigeon and we stand an excellent chance of connecting with this Caribbean speciality anywhere in the Keys with mangroves. A stop at the Crocodile Lake may result in a sighting of the rare American Crocodile (not to be confused with the abundant American Alligator). Many of the upper-middle Keys are highly developed, but the remaining patches of vegetation are good for migrants and help to concentrate the birds for us.
The shorebirds often include more difficult species to find like Wilson’s and Piping Plover and we will stop to check flocks of shorebirds, egrets, herons, gulls and terns when habitat and tide suit. One of the Golf Courses regularly holds nesting Burrowing Owl and we will try to see these charismatic ground dwelling owls dodge golf balls on the fairway! By staying in the Keys we will be able to search in the evening for the highly localised Antillean Nighthawk.
Day 6 - Florida Keys
On our final full day we will bird Big Pine Key, one of the least developed and most productive Keys for birding. It is also home to the elusive Key Deer, a dog-sized cousin of the White-tailed Deer, as well as numerous birds. One moment we will be birding in the wooded hammocks for migrant birds and the next we will be on the beach accompanied by flyby groups of Brown Pelicans, Willets and hundreds of Laughing Gulls whilst overhead Magnificent Frigatebirds will float above us like Pterodactyls!
Day 7 – Homeward bound
Depending upon the time of our flight, we might have enough time for some final pre-breakfast birding. Then we will drive to Miami airport and head home to the UK.