Florida, part 2: more birds

Thanks to the wonders of technology, we got continually notified as our flight home was delayed again and again, so we were able to travel more around the Ft. Lauderdale area. We spent a little time on a narrow strip of beach near a small park (Hugh Taylor Birch State Park), where Adam had frequently gone when he lived nearby. There were Sanderlings dashing in and out of the crashing waves, and Brown Pelicans cruising stately on the high wind.

The Sanderlings were another life bird for me--like the Blue-Winged Teal, I'm sure I've seen them before, but they weren't on my list. Cute little guys.

Anyway, I also got great looks at a lot of birds I had seen before, so I'm going to share a few pictures. This Belted Kingfisher was hovering pretty high over Green Cay. I guess she was grabbing insects from the air? This is one of my better bird-in-flight photos.

Most of the familiar birds we saw were at Green Cay. This Green Heron hinted along a marsh edge only twenty feet or so from the boardwalk.

Soras are usually hard to spot (except the one who was stuck in the Loch in Central Park last Fall). This one was pretty confiding.

Snowy Egrets are usually shyer than this, too. I wonder what about Green Cay made these birds all so confiding?

My first Painted Bunting was the famous Prespect Park (Brooklyn) bird earlier in the winter. In south Florida, they're feeder birds.

There's a feeder off the path between the parking lot and the nature center, which the Buntings liked. I saw my first female painted bunting there. While not as gaudy as the males, they are quite pretty birds. I think they are the only all-green birds in the U.S.

This very friendly Boat-Tailed Grackle hung around the Greek restaurant we stopped at the first day, begging food and singing. The waiter told us the bird would steal sugar packets from the tables.

There were Boat-Tailed Grackles all over Green Cay. Here's a nice close shot of a female.

We saw various warblers, as well. Besides this Palm Warbler (one of several), Yellow-Rumped Warblers were thick in the reeds. There were a few Black-and_White Warblers as well, and along the path from the parking lot I spotted a Prairie Warbler.

And in the last minutes of our second trip to Green Cay, we spotted this Nashville Warbler near the parking lot, a local rarity that had been frequently sighted there this winter.

This Red-Shouldered Hawk was one of two hawk species we spotted in Florida (the other were a juvenile and an adult Marsh Harrier). This Red-Shouldered is quite pale, which apparently is a common color morph in south Florida.

Here's a nice close-up of a Pied-Billed Grebe to round things out. I'll have one more Florida post in a couple of days.

American Tree Sparrow, Red-Shouldered Hawk, and a mystery hawk

Sunday, I went to Riverdale to take my aunt out to lunch, and on the way I stopped for an hour's birding in Inwood Hill Park, where I ran into my first American Tree Sparrow of the year.

Tree, Sparrow

All the classic marks: red cap, bicolor bill, breast clear except for one central spot, single bold wingbar (not shown).

On the way home, I went across Central Park. Entering the Ramble, I ran into Adrian Burke, who told me there was a Red-Shouldered Hawk "just west of the Oven". We don't get to see those all that often in the City. At Mugger's Woods in the Ramble, I saw a big lump high in a tree, and it turned out to be this:

rare visitor

...a Red-Shouldered Hawk. He flew off, roughly in the direction of the Oven, and I wound up tracking him through the Ramble.

Red shoulder, see?

Now here's the funny thing. When I got to the Oven, Bruce Yolton was there with his camera set up, its enormous lens trained on a hawk in a tree just west of the Oven--well, a few steps down the path to the Riviera. "What the heck is this bird?" he asked me and another birder.

Mystery hawk

What, indeed? We couldn't quite figure it out. Clearly a Buteo by shape, but that isn't the belly band of a Red-Tail, and that tail is quite long for a Buteo (though too short for an Accipiter), and the banding is faint with thick dark bands, not the many thin bold bands of a juvenile Red-Tailed. 

another view of a mystery

Aside from the shape and tail length, when it flew out, it used not the flap-flap-glide style of an Accipiter but the fast steady strokes of, well, a Red-Shouldered Hawk.

So I think this may be an immature-plumage Red-Shouldered. If I'm right, two Red-Shouldered Hawks in Central Park at once is amazing.