Wood Stork

The only stork and the largest wading bird that breeds in the United States, the Wood Stork is found in the Southeast, as well as coastal Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Due to the degradation of the Everglades, Wood Stork populations have significantly declined since the 1960s. As south Florida populations decreased, Wood Storks are more often seen north into northern Florida and coastal South Carolina.  Breeding success has been limited in these northern areas. We found these storks along the Anhinga Trail in the Everglades National Park (top and bottom photos) and in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.  Neither area should be missed by visiting birders.

Since I photographed many Florida birds during our trip in 2010, this year I attempted to take some photos showing birds "artistic" poses.  The photo above is a result.  I purposefully centered the shot on the eye, cutting off the tip of the bill and the body.  If nothing else, you can see the origin of the Wood Stork's folk name of Ironhead or Flinthead.

Wood Storks are tactile feeders, they capture food by feeling with their bills  Although they can feed visually, tactile feeding allows them to forage in murky wetlands, without depending on sight. As you can see in the photo below, this Wood Stork is feeding with its bill completely hidden. (Much of the information in this post is gleaned from Coulter et. al 1999).

Crab-like Spiny Orb Weaver

The Crab-like Spiny Orb Weaver is certainly a small creature that deserves to have its common name capitalized.  We encountered this spider in the Key West Botanical Garden.  The species is found along woodland edges and citrus groves from the southern United States south through the Caribbean and South America.

Breeding males approach a female's web and tap out a four-beat "tune" on her web.  The female ties him down, and a lengthy copulation ensues. I assume the male survives this welcome.  Females are short lived, dying after laying egg masses in the spring.

As you can see, this spider leaves prey remains in its web.  The Crab-like Spiny Orb Weaver is not considered to be hazardous to humans. Indeed, this spider is welcomed by citrus growers, as the arachnid consumes fruit flies, as well as white flies, mosquitoes, moths, beetles, and other small flying insects.

White Ibis

The White Ibis is a common wading bird of the southeastern United States and coasts of Mexico and Central America.  They breed in wetlands (swamps and esturaries), often favoring freshwater. When they breed in salt water they may suffer salt stress and they require additional freshwater sources for their young to develop properly.  Nevertheless, White Ibis were abundant throughout the Florida Keys. 

White Ibis tend to be nomadic, thereby taking advantage of shallow feeding areas created by lack of rainfall. We also saw them foraging in fields. In Florida, as elsewhere, this ibis is "threatened by development, pollution, and water management." Their diet is varied, but concentrates on freshwater crayfish and estuarine crabs.  Just about any aquatic and even terrestrial prey item you can think of has been consumed by White Ibis--including worms, cockroaches, fish, lizards, snakes, and even young White Ibis.

This information (and quote) are taken from Heath et. al 2009 (in The Birds of North America Online), who, however, do not mention Wonder Bread as being consumed by White Ibis.  The ibis in this photo was being fed white bread by homeless-looking people in a city park in Key West. The ibis tossed the bread up with its bill and snapped the bread out of the air.

White-crowned Pigeon

The White-crowned Pigeon we saw in Key West was new for my United States bird-list. We were walking to a restaurant in the middle of the city when Erika looked up and asked, "Isn't that the bird you are looking for?" For once I did not have my camera--this photo was taken with my friend Mark's cell phone! Despite returning several times to the intersection where we found it, we never saw this pigeon again.

I expected to find a White-crowned Pigeon to be a shy forest resident, not perched on electrical lines in the middle of the city.  I read with interest in Bancroft and Bowman (2001) that this species has "become habituated to humans, feeding around hotels and in suburban back yards."  This bird is an obligate frugivore, which means they only eat fruit. White-crowned Pigeons are threatened throughout their Caribbean range by habitat destruction and unregulated hunting.

Florida Butterflies 2

After meeting two lepidopterists at the Key West Botanical Gardens, we were able to easily identify this Fiery Skipper with the aid of their excellent butterfly field guide.  Having its back-wings more fully opened than its fore-wings indicates this butterfly is a grass skipper.  This skipper wanders north from Mexico and the southern United States.  Where weather permits, this species flies all year.  Often common, the larvae love lawn grasses.  The black, toothed margins of the hind wing is a field mark of the Fiery Skipper.

Back in Key West, Erika and I found a Gulf Fritillary, another southern species that wanders north in the summer.  The black-ringed white spots in the fore-wing are indicative of this butterfly.  They fly all year in frost-free regions. The larvae eat passion vines.

Florida Butterflies 1

Erika and I visited the Key West Botanical Garden.  We met two people who knew their butterflies the way some of us know birds.  The couple strolled through the gardens with their binoculars on the ready.  Readers of my blog will know that I often photograph butterflies, and so it was with great interest that I noted their fantastic book, the Kaufman Field Guide to Butterflies of North America. We recommend the book and look forward to using it in Minnesota this summer.

Our butterflying couple identified two species for us.  The first was the Giant Swallowtail.  It inhabits the southeast and strays towards Minnesota and New England.  In southern Florida they are out all year, gracefully gliding through the foliage.  Farmers consider this species to be a pest since the larvae feast on citrus leaves.

Later we came upon the beautiful skipper photographed below.  We ran back to our experts, telling them, "we just found the most gorgeous green and blue butterfly with a tail like a tropical hummingbird's."  The couple quickly identified it as a Long-tailed Skipper and showed us its photo in Kaufman's book. This butterfly is common along the Piedmont of the southeast, the Gulf Coast, and both Mexican coasts.  It flies all year where weather permits and is an agricultural pest, as the larvae are fond of beans and other legumes.

American Kestrel

In April and May, the Dry Tortugas are an oasis for exhausted migratory landbirds crossing the Gulf of Mexico.  In February, we found only three landbird species: a few Palm Warblers, an Eurasian Collared-Dove, and this American Kestrel.

This relatively tame kestrel perched and fed Fort Jefferson's in the central courtyard.  Curiously, for such a common bird across most of North America, until this day I have had difficulty approaching one for a photograph. Kestrels feed on arthropods and small vertebrates, usually taking them on the ground.  Twice, this bird plummeted to the ground but I could not see what it captured.  Potential prey did not seem to be abundant.

Magnificent Frigatebird

In the United States, Magnificent Frigatebirds only breed in the Dry Tortugas.  The breed elsewhere in the Caribbean and also in various locations in the Pacific.  Frigatebirds wander regularly to North Carolina and the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.  Hurricanes blow them further astray, often considerable distances inland.  Several frigatebirds have even been recorded in Minnesota.

When we visited the Dry Tortugas in February, we watched this juvenile bird catch a small fish from the sea surface. (Frigatebirds never land in the water--they are not very waterproof.)  This bird did a curious thing.  The bird dropped its fish, and then swooped down and recaptured it, only to drop it again.  Was this some short of practice fishing?  Or playing?  Later in Key West, we saw a male frigatebird high in the air toss a fish to a female flying below it.  The female caught the fish.  So perhaps the frigatebird we saw in the Dry Tortugas was practicing some sort of mating behavior.

Frigatebirds have the longest wingspan in proportion to weight of all birds (Dunn and Alderfer 2006). Notice this male frigatebird's red throat pouch.

Male frigate birds form displaying groups (leks) and attract females by inflating their throat pouches.  The birds below are from the Galapagos Islands.  Notice that the female Magnificent Frigatebird has a dark head and a white lower breast, unlike the juvenile in the first two photographs in this post.  Females lay only one egg. Apparently males abandon their families after the young are half-grown, and are able to produce a second young with a new mate while their first female cares of the initial hatchling (Diamond and Schreiber 2002).

Dry Tortugas

The Dry Tortugas are a National Park about 70 miles west of Key West.  The major island contains Fort Jefferson, which just about fills the whole atoll.  This fort is said to be the second largest brick edifice in the world, after the Great Wall of China.  Built by the North during the Civil War, northern prisoners were kept there.  Perhaps the most famous inmate was Samuel Mudd, who mended Lincoln-assassin John Booth's broken leg.

Because of its breeding colony of seabirds, the island adjacent to Fort Jefferson is of interest to birders.  In February, birds were just beginning to return to breed.  Many of the more uncommon species had yet to appear.  The National Park Service does not allow visitors close access to the breeding colony, but I was able to get a couple of photos of the two common seabirds in the area.

The photo above is of a Sooty Tern.  The birds below are Brown Noddies, which are also terns.  Both species are pantropical, which means they are found in many tropical oceans.  Indeed, I listed the Sooty Tern for the first time in Australia and the Brown Noddy in the Galapagos.  In the United States, Sooty Terns breed on the Dry Tortugas, on islands off the Louisiana coast, and in the Hawaiian Islands.  They only come to land to breed, and are known to stay in the air for several years between hatching and first nesting.  They are prone to be blown to strange places by hurricanes, reaching such far off locations such as New York and Wisconsin.

Although the Brown Noddy is found in many tropical oceans and breeds elsewhere in the Caribbean, the Dry Tortugas is the only continental United States breeding location.  Colonies also breed in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U. S. Virgin Islands. They lay but one egg, and the young take several years to mature.  Their name is derived from head bobbing that occurs during courtship displays.

Great White Heron

Erika and I are back from a month's sojourn to Florida.  Although we enjoyed a respite from cold and snowy Minnesota, February Florida birding proved to be disappointing. Many Florida specialties were ensconced even further south in the Caribbean. We definitely enjoyed 83 degree days for two weeks in Key West.  The trip's high-point was a visit to the Dry Tortugas, and I will soon post a report. Those interested in a complete list of the birds we listed can click on the 2011 Birding tab above this post.

I only added two birds to my life-list.  One was a Roseate Tern, the first bird I identified by comparing calls between the birds and my cell phone.  The other is a semi-species: the Great White Heron (in the photo above).  Currently this large-billed, yellow-legged heron is considered to be a color phase of a Great Blue Heron.  The situation is confusing.  Intermediates with white heads occur in south Florida  (called Wurdemann's Herons). Studies suggest significant behavioral differences between white and dark birds.  We may yet see the Great White Heron, elevated to species status. Great White Herons are found on some Caribbean islands, but are mostly restricted to the Florida Keys in the United States.