Florida (Part 3) - Black Point Wildlife Loop

 This whole post is at Black Point Wildlife drive, an excellent bird hotspot, especially for herons. We found this spot when we were exploring Cape Canaveral. It's about a 12 km loop, winding through marshy habitat (with palm trees! which is really bizarre for us). I'll try to be sparing on words, and liberal on photos.
Right at the entrance of the loop there was a marshy expanse with plenty of heron lifers. Roseate Spoonbill was a highlight. We spent a few minutes at the entrance photographing them. Reddish Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Great Egrets, Little Blue Herons, Tricoloured Herons, Glossy Ibises, White Ibises were all right there.

Roseate Spoonbill

Roseate Spoonbill

Little Blue Heron

 We went at a very slow pace as we winded along the thin path, and we had the doors of the van open on either side so we could view the birds better. They weren't very perturbed by us so we could get nice photos and views.
Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets were the most common, but there was an abundance of all the other types as well. It's funny how when you see the first one it's "WOW! Awesome! Amazing!!" and after you see a few dozen around every corner it's "Hm, there's ten, there's a few over there, there's about a dozen there." And that's the way it was.

Great Egret

 Anhinga's seemed to like to dry their feathers right beside the road, which offered great close up viewings and photography.

Anhinga

And of course, what would Florida be without gators? This is the first alligator we saw in Florida, it was quite a small one.

Alligator

Glossy Ibis

 Reddish Egrets were also in great abundance, either they or Tricoloured Herons were the most common under Great Egret and Snowy Egret (discounting White Ibis, which were the most common everywhere.
This egret beside the road provided a great photoshoot, dunking in the water and striking excellent poses.

Reddish Egret

Reddish Egret

Reddish Egret

Reddish Egret

 And switch off to the short lens to get some landscape photos. A 300mm nonadjustable telephoto lens isn't the best for that. In this photo there is a Little Blue Heron far in the back, two Snowy Egrets a bit closer, and a Tricoloured Heron and Hooded Mergansers in the foreground.

Palm Tree!!

You can get a feel for what the habitat was like in this photo:

A cool looking tree

 And clip the telephoto lens back on for the bird photos.

Snowy Egret

Great Egret

 I love this photo for how blue the cormorant's eye is.

Double-crested Cormorant

Anhinga

Brown Anole

 Wood Storks weren't as common as some of the others, but common enough. They are such cool birds!

Wood Stork

Pied-billed Grebe

Tricoloured Heron

 Here is a little lookout shelter thingy with a Reddish Egret on top of it.

Osprey

The path

 These little birds were sneaking along the ditches on either side of the road. At first I couldn't tell what they were until I got a better look at them, a Common Gallinule! There is also a American Coot behind it, perfect for comparison.

Common Gallinule

 Then we came to this place which was a bit different from the other habitat, a bit of a mud flat. There were shorebirds such as Dunlin, Semipalmated Plover and Black-bellied Plover

There were a few of these, bushes full of Snowy Egrets. The egret in the center of this one is actually a Great Egret though.

Snowy Egrets

Roseate Spoonbill

Roseate Spoonbill

 A perfect pose:

Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron

Blue Winged Teal

 Another Alligator

This Snowy Egret on this drainage thing didn't get too much attention from us, because just then we spotted a Green Heron!

Snowy Egret

 Another lifer! These are really cool birds, quite a bit smaller than the other herons.

Green Heron

Green Heron

And another extremely long post has drawn to an end. I hope you enjoyed it as much as me. Stay tuned for the next post!

And if you thought this wasn't enough photos at this spot (which I doubt) we went back later, and got some more!

Oak Hammock Marsh Christmas Bird Count

On Saturday the 14th I went to a Christmas Bird Count at Oak Hammock Marsh. Oak Hammock Marsh is a 36 km² Wildlife Management Area and birding hotspot home to 300 species of birds. Since Oak Hammock Marsh is nearly 40 minutes away from where we live, we woke early and met at 7:45 AM at the Marsh Interpretive Centre. We were divided into groups, me, my dad, my twin brother and Christian Artuso were in one group. We had to cover different zones that we were assigned. We had zone ten to do.

I circled Oak Hammock Marsh to show how wide the circle of zones is. Our zone is 10.

ebird checklists:
Bunns Road near Red River and area, Selkirk Area County, Manitoba, CA
Hwy 9 just north of Lockport, Selkirk Area County, Manitoba, CA
Clarke and Mowatt Roads area, Selkirk Area County, Manitoba, CA
Hwy 44 & Rockhaven Rd in 14PA55, Selkirk Area County, Manitoba, CA
Birds Hill Rd, Hay Rd, Henderson Hwy, Selkirk Area County, Manitoba, C

We set out at about 8:00. The count really wasn't just at Oak Hammock Marsh, actually the edge of the circle of zones is over 20 km away from the marsh.We used the map and drove around our zone, lots of the time looking for bird feeders to count birds. There were lots of chickadees and by the end we counted 85 of them.

Chickadees at one of the feeders we watched

We drove around finding bird feeders or every once in a while stopping and listening. We mistook a white round antenna thing for a Snowy Owl until my brother took a picture and zoomed way in on it. We walked down a railway track for a couple minutes but that didn't really produce anything so we went back to the car.
We found a really good place that we counted 4 Hairy Woodpeckers, 4 Blue Jays, numerous chickadees, a Downy Woodpecker and even 2 Dark-eyed Juncos, which was a bit of a treat. We heard a Evening Grosbeak call once, I had never seen or heard one before, a new one on my life list.

Downy Woodpecker

Hairy Woodpecker

We also found some sapsucker wells at the same spot.

A sapsucker must have worked hard on so many sap wells

We saw 33 Sharp-tailed Grouse, the record of the most on any Oak Hammock Marsh Christmas bird counts. Sharp-tailed Grouse was also a new one for me.

Sharp-tailed Grouse

There was a single Snow Bunting that we saw flying over. After we covered our zone we headed back for a hot lunch at the Oak Hammock Interpretive Centre which started at 11:30. We were in zone 9 driving back to the centre when Christian suddenly called out to stop the car. We hopped out and he pointed to the owl sitting into a tall evergreen tree. It was a Northern Hawk Owl.

Northern Hawk Owl preening

 These owls aren't very common here so it was quite the find. Me and my brother got lots of pictures. After watching it for a bit we decided to go back.

It eyed us cautiously

Christian said that Northern Hawk Owls were fairly friendly and wouldn't too easily fly away from us.

It didn't take much notice of us

There were prizes for the group with the most birds seen, the most species seen, and the best bird. We won with the most species seen totaling 13, we each got a Oak Hammock Marsh water bottle. Another group won with the most birds seen, over 1000 while we only got 165 (they saw a flock of Snow Buntings). Everyone voted on the best bird, ours we had as Evening Grosbeak because we never saw the Northern Hawk Owl in our zone. It was close between our Evening Grosbeak, a Red-winged Blackbird and a Northern Shrike. In the end we were tied with the Red-winged Blackbird. But both of us had already won prizes so we passed the prize onto it on to the Northern Shrike team. On our way home we checked if the Northern Hawk Owl was still there but it wasn't. When we were gone my family saw a Pileated Woodpecker as you read in the previous post.
I had a very fun time and now have a few more birds on my life list, and saw a Northern Hawk Owl!

Hands down, the best bird was this wonderful Northern Hawk Owl!