Fort DeSoto Park, FL - 15 Mar 2006
0700 Hrs. Drove to Tampa this morning to Fort DeSoto. Skies are clear, but its windy and cool (cold front). Sand is blowing out into the ocean along North Beach, and there are no shorebirds to be found.
A handful of Laughing Gulls and Brown Pelicans are all that’s here.
A back bay had a pair of Willets and a single Red-winged Blackbird.
I drove farther south and stopped at a secluded lagoon protected from the wind and found a colony of Laughing Gulls,
Royal Terns,
Sandwich Terns,
Met a couple of retirees from Troy who are avid bird photographers who are spending winters in Sarasota – they shoot Canons w/ 500mm lenses.
As I drove out I spotted a pair of Loggerhead Shrikes courting, singing (“jink-jink-jink”), and feeding along the road.
An American Kestrel male was on an overhead wire, also.
As I left the park a pond in a nearby subdivision held several hundred Lesser Scaup, Coots, Ruddy Ducks, and Northern Shovelers.
I did see a small flock of Black-bellied Plovers in basic plumage, but otherwise the shorebirds were no where to be seen. A Boat-tailed Grackle posed nicely as I drove home.
Mar 15, 2006 7:30 AM
Protocol: Incidental
17 species
Northern Shoveler (Spatula clypeata) 2
Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis) 2
Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator) 2
Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis) 2
American Coot (Fulica americana) 2
Black-bellied Plover (Pluvialis squatarola) 2
Willet (Tringa semipalmata) 2
Laughing Gull (Leucophaeus atricilla) 2
Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) 2
Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) 2
Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger) 2
Caspian Tern (Hydroprogne caspia) 2
Forster's Tern (Sterna forsteri) 2
Sandwich Tern (Thalasseus sandvicensis) 2
Royal Tern (Thalasseus maximus) 2
American Kestrel (Falco sparverius) 2
Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus) 2
View this checklist online at https://ebird.org/checklist/S4
This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (https://ebird.org/home)
