I had originally planned to do a Peru follow up today but I feel more inspired to write about some other recent birdy events. I can do the Peru follow up in the near future.
I currently live in northern Florida. One of the iconic groups of Florida birds are the long-legged waders which are so abundant in our wetlands. Everglades National Park was created to protect these birds during the fad for egret feathers on women’s hats in the early years of the last century. Not only are these birds beautiful, many of them are also very easy to see. A few weeks ago I saw a group of white ibis foraging in a ditch between a parking lot and a four lane highway outside our local CVS pharmacy.
Today I want to focus on the most diverse group of waders in North America, the family Ardeidae. These are the herons, egrets, and bitterns. They can be easily distinguished from their relatives such as storks, ibis, and spoonbills by having straight, pointed bills. Every Ardeid species that regularly occurs in North America is found in Florida (see the end of this diary for an annotated list). Note: I am excluding the Little Egret from this list which is a vagrant from Europe that sometimes shows up on the east coast, but apparently not as far south as Florida. I have seen 12 species locally, most of them many times.
In contrast I grew up in Ontario, Canada which has six species in this family and I only ever saw two of them when I lived there: Great Blue Heron and Green Heron. A couple of weeks ago I was in Ontario on a family vacation and we were staying near the town of Lindsay, an hour or so east of Toronto. I looked into places to go locally where we could experience the great outdoors. We visited several conservation areas and provincial parks. We did see some cool things like the family of Trumpeter Swans below, but generally mid-summer is not a great time for birding.
One place, very close to where we were staying was the Dunsford Nature Trail, located near the hamlet of Dunsford Ontario. It is a converted railway trail, running through agricultural land and it didn’t seem as interesting at first glance on the web as other areas nearby. However my wife and I went there on our last full day in the area for a walk in the morning. We saw four (4!) species of herons and bitterns on that walk (!!). In addition to a Great Blue Herons and numerous Green Herons we had a great look at an American Bittern and my wife had a brief glimpse of a Least Bittern (at the very northern edge of their breeding range). We also heard Virginia Rails calling which is a bit outside the scope of this diary but also awesome.
Returning to Florida we visited St Marks National Wildlife Refuge last weekend. The highlight of the trip was a family of Least Bitterns. The parents were seen flying between one patch of wetland grasses and another where they would vanish upon landing (which is basically all of my least bittern sightings). The two chicks were seen perched in the vegetation, with patches of their baby plumage still attached. The pictures below are terrible (taken after sunset through the spotting scope) but hopefully you can make out the birds.
Below I have a few other recent photos, taken while snorkeling. The birds allow a ridiculously close approach if you are in the water.
Appendix: Heron, Egret, and Bittern list with special reference to the Tallahassee region.
The Conspicuous Quintet: Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Little Blue Heron, Tricolor Heron, Snowy Egret. “They’re everywhere, they’re everywhere!”. These five species make up the vast majority of sightings of herons and egrets locally. Although there are some differences in habitat preference any of these species could be found on any body of water containing potential food.
The Night Shift: Black-crowned and Yellow-crowned night herons. These birds are nocturnal as their names suggest and places where they roost or nest are the best to see them. In other words you aren’t going to be seeing them all over the place but if you know where to look they aren’t that hard to find, especially black-crowned.
The Habitat Specialists: Reddish Egret and Cattle Egret. Reddish Egrets are coastal birds, who like to forage in open shallow water where they pursue a strategy of actively scaring and pursuing prey. They breed in central and south Florida but occur in small numbers up here, most commonly from late summer into fall. Cattle egrets are very different from other species in that they feed in grasslands rather than wetlands. We have relatively little pasture locally so cattle egrets aren’t super common. We frequently see them flying at dusk, presumably heading from feeding areas to roosts.
The Odd Heron Out: Green Heron. The green heron is sort of halfway between a heron and a bittern in both appearance and behavior. They favor heavily vegetated habitats but are not nearly as secretive as bitterns. I tend to forget about them until I see one which is a bit unfair as they are very attractive birds.
The Bitterns: American Bittern, Least Bittern. The bitterns are very different from the other Ardeids. Both species are very secretive residents of heavily vegetated wetland areas. Both are migratory and are found in north Florida at different times of year. The American bittern is only found in Florida in the winter, while the Least Bittern is essentially a tropical species that is a permanent resident in southern Florida and is only present during the breeding season further north. Least Bitterns are fairly common breeders around Tallahassee although hard to see.
South Florida Specialities: Great White Heron, White Morph of Reddish Egret. Both of these are restricted to far southern Florida. Originally Great White Herons were considered just a color variant of Great Blue Herons but now the thinking seems to be that they might be considered a separate subspecies or even species. As far as I know the white morph reddish egrets are still considered a color variant of regular reddish egrets. I’ve never seen either of these in north Florida and I’ve never seen a white reddish egret anywhere.
Sorry this diary is a bit of a last minute mash up. I had intended to write it yesterday but I found myself exhausted in the late afternoon and slept for several hours. So I did it at the last minute this morning. I had intended to go and do field work early but will do it now. I should be around in the late morning. I hope you enjoy the diary.