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.
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
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.