It required a single visit to Sawgrass Lake Park in Pinellas County to consider it one of my favorite wildlife venues in Florida. Sawgrass Lake Park, north of downtown St. Petersburg and southwest of Tampa, was created primarily to manage stormwater flooding in the adjacent city of Pinellas Park. A small waterfall in fact could […]
Imagine arriving to work and finding nearly 400 dead birds on the ground. That’s precisely what happened at the American National Insurance building in Galveston, Texas, on May 4, 2017. In a single night, hundreds of migrating birds slammed into the side of the skyscraper. All but three found on the ground died. The birds […]
A lot of people seem to think it’s still summer—yesterday’s sweltering 88 degrees contributes to that misapprehension. Birds know better. Days are noticeably getting shorter, most baby birds of the year are on their own now, and adults are recovering from the rigors of raising those young birds—many have finished molting into new feathers and […]
This weekend I headed to the Sax-Zim Bog with my little dog Pip and my good friend Lisa. We’re in the silent part of summer now, when parent birds are busy chasing their little ones around more than singing, but we got to hear a surprising number of birds on Nichols Lake Road when we […]
I’ve been checking on my Red-bellied Woodpeckers every day, and every day the chicks, still entirely hidden in the cavity, get noisier and more insistent. When I returned from Maine on June 15, probably only a day or two after they’d started hatching, I couldn’t hear any sounds during feeding time; it took a few […]
A trek to Fort De Soto Park in Pinellas County is especially rewarding during migration season. Fort De Soto is a magnet for birds. In fact there have been 337 species sighted at the park and reported to eBird as of this writing. Ron Smith has noted that a Western Grebe was observed and photographed […]
Spring is bringing back green and sprightly songbirds to Flower Hill Farm Retreat. The Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus) remains elusive both in sighting and song so far this spring. Odd for one who loves to sing so much. There are more photos and information about this vireo over at Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. Perhaps […]
I had a pretty good time at Central Winds this morning. I’d seen an Acadian Flycatcher there yesterday, though there was enough yellow on it that I thought it might have been an early Yellow-bellied Flycatcher. My recording of its calls was pretty terrible, but I still think it’s an Acadian. I returned to where […]