Traipsing across the mud flats at Fort Desoto's north beach area with members of the St. Petersburg Audubon Society.
Shortly after 8 a.m. this morning I found myself standing out on the rather chilly mud flats at Fort Desoto County Park with members of the St. Petersburg Audubon Society, hoping to learn about shorebirds. For a novice, shorebirds are incredibly challenging to identify. But with the assistance of experienced birders I found myself quickly learning what to look for, which made the task of identification faster and easier, and I hope will yield more accurate results.
There were quite a few serious photographers at Fort Desoto Park this morning with long lenses and tripods.
This Palm warbler was right out on the beach. That's white quartz beach sand in the photo, not snow.
I jotted down an informal list of the birds we saw this morning:
- Northern harrier (marsh hawk)
- Redwing blackbirds
- Killdeer
- Snowy plover
- Piping plover
- Wilson’s plover
- Semi-palmated plover
- Black-bellied plover
- Dunlin
- Red knot
- Cardinal
- Laughing gull
- Ring-billed gull
- Herring gull
- Common tern
- Royal tern
- Forsters tern
- Red breasted merganser
- Reddish egret
- Reddish egret white morph
- Belted kingfisher
- White pelicans (more than 100)
- Palm warbler
- American oystercatcher
- Bald eagle (2)
- Ospreys
- Great Blue Heron
- Great egret
- Western sandpiper
- Sanderling
- Least sandpiper
- Turkey vulture
- Black vulture
- Kestrel
- Red-shouldered hawk
- Loggerhead shrike
Audubon member putting a scope on 3 distant Black-bellied plovers. Egmont Key is visible in the background.
We stood out on the beach looking for shorebirds and saw everything but. Finally we went back to our cars and drove to the East beach area, which was much more productive.
The Snowy plover was so hard to see that most of our group walked right past it at first.
I’m used to birding alone, but one of the things I like about birding with a group is that with so many eyes and binoculars, I end up seeing more birds when I’m with a group of experienced birders. So I’ll be doing more of this.
The highlights of this morning’s trip for me were seeing 90 white pelicans flying past Skyway park, single file; watching two bald eagles soaring overhead; seeing the white morph of a Reddish egret; and identifying six species of plover.
