Birders Search And Find A Rare Treat

Birders Search And Find A Rare Treat

By Mari­na Cinami

As the warm morn­ing sun climbed and mos­qui­toes buzzed, about 20 hik­ers walked soft­ly onto a small wood­en deck perched over the edge of Eco Pond near the Flamin­go area of Ever­glades Nation­al Park.

They were qui­et because they were there to glimpse col­or­ful, grace­ful birds and there were many to see. Birds of every kind called from the sky and from the trees while many more stood tall in the shal­low, clear pond, using their beaks to search for break­fast beneath the water’s surface.

Then Shau­na Cotrell, a park ranger, gasped and grabbed for her scope.  She searched and found black spot­ted mark­ings on tail feath­ers, and then the bird came into focus, sit­ting qui­et­ly on a tree branch that hov­ered out over the water.

It was a rare man­grove cuck­oo. The bird­ers around her began to gasp and point, sti­fling their glee to hushed tones so as not to risk the cuck­oo fly­ing off. They watched the small, buff-col­ored bird perched light­ly on the thin, leafy branch, for min­utes on end. Oth­ers high-fived each oth­er, oohed and aahed.

The man­grove cuck­oo is rarely spot­ted,  Cotrell explained.

CotrellParmelee
Shau­na Cotrell, a ranger at Ever­glades Nation­al Park’s Flamin­go offices, takes out a group to search for birds.
Pho­to by Caitie Parmelee.

Sight­ings like this are why Paul Gray, sci­ence coor­di­na­tor for Audubon Flori­da, has called the Ever­glades “a biologist’s par­adise.” For rea­sons like this he says, “I’ve nev­er real­ly want­ed to do any­thing else.”

Accord­ing to the U.S. For­est Ser­vice, there are tens of thou­sands of avid bird­ers in the Unit­ed States. The Nation­al Audubon Soci­ety has over 600,000 members.

Gray says his pas­sion for wildlife devel­oped when he began col­lege. He came to Flori­da to work on a project on mot­tled ducks and it was then that he fell in love with the “orig­i­nal, sub­trop­i­cal and unique ecosys­tems remaining.”

Offi­cials say there are over 360 species of bird in South Florida.

On this day a group that ranged from avid bird­ers to novices jour­neyed to see what they could find.

Among them was young Jamie Good­speed, who at 13 years old already knows more about birds than many of the oth­er bird­ers on the hike that day. She has an eye for spot­ting them, often before any­one else. She explained that her inter­est in birds devel­oped over the past year and that it was sim­ple curios­i­ty that led her to research a bird in her back­yard to find out what it was.

Some­times I’d be out and I’d be like ‘oh, what’s that? I’ve seen that before that must be the wood duck I saw in the book’ and it would be and I just kept doing that for a while and then I got real­ly good at bird­ing.”  She has learned a lot more since then and spent the hike with her eyes locked on either her binoc­u­lars or her bird species guide book.

Her favorite bird, besides war­blers of any kind, she says is the Flori­da scrub­jay. It is a threat­ened species and also the only bird endem­ic to the state of Flori­da. Jamie explained that it is gen­er­al­ly a friend­ly bird, which needs the nat­ur­al fires that used to occur in the Ever­glades in order to sur­vive. These fires have large­ly been pre­vent­ed for many years now and the scrub­jay is los­ing its only habi­tat as a result.

Many more birds in the area need spe­cif­ic water lev­els in order to build their nests and feed their young. The roseate spoon­bills, for exam­ple, are eas­i­ly rec­og­nized for their bright peach-pink feath­ers and the flat spoon-shape at the end of their long bills. They’re often found wad­ing through shal­low water, swoop­ing their long necks back and forth with their beak under the water, on the search for food. They are well-loved by bird­ers but are a threat­ened species because they need a very par­tic­u­lar water lev­el to make their nests and care for their young. That envi­ron­ment is shrink­ing in the Ever­glades due to water redistribution.

For most birds, that’s their prob­lem, is habi­tat loss,” Cotrell said.

Gray explained that “there’s half as many wet­lands as there used to be.” Over­all the land is too dry, and the water lev­els change sud­den­ly and dras­ti­cal­ly in accor­dance with how much water the devel­oped areas need at the time. This method is exact­ly oppo­site of how nature intend­ed for the water lev­els to fluctuate.

An $8 bil­lion restora­tion effort is under­way in the Ever­glades to change that. The birds

An osprey perched on top of a flag pole. Photo by Caitie Parmelee
An osprey perched on top of a flag pole.
Pho­to by Caitie Parmelee.

native to the area and those that migrate in and out with the chang­ing sea­sons are both indi­ca­tors of the over­all suc­cess of that effort.

The bird­ing group saw sev­er­al osprey, which are not too hard to find in the Ever­glades. These black or brown birds with strik­ing white marks around their faces are every­where. The hik­ing group that morn­ing even found sev­er­al nests, and young ospreys that appear to be tak­ing their first flight out into the open air.

The group moved from fresh to salt water and they sight­ed a flock of pel­i­cans. As they swooped low to the sur­face of Flori­da Bay to snap up some break­fast, Cotrell explained they have the sec­ond largest wingspan of any bird in North Amer­i­ca. Only the Cal­i­for­nia condor’s is larg­er, by the length of one foot.

More than two hours after they have begun, the group end­ed its search for birds.  For Cotrell, the  best day of the sea­son was when a  pre­vi­ous group count­ed 51 bird species.  She returned to the office and tal­lied up the count on this day.

The group, she report­ed lat­er, sight­ed 51 species.