Quickly, we will probably be heading to Southwest Florida for the winter. The next are a number of the birds I eagerly sit up for seeing once more.
1. Roseate Spoonbill. Assume pink! This fowl is probably the most flamboyant of Florida’s waders, with its pink physique, scarlet shoulders, orange tail, and featherless, greenish head. It’s the solely spoonbill on the earth with colored plumage.
2. Painted Bunting. That is the “crayon-box” fowl. The male has a greenish yellow again, blue head with crimson orbital ring, and crimson underparts. An important place to see them is at Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. There are feeders exterior the customer centre home windows, which the buntings go to recurrently.
3. Swallow-tailed Kite. This fowl is a chic flier, because it glides and swoops above the treetops. Their flight fashion reveals us why the kids’s toy is known as after them. They return to SW Florida in mid-February, for the breeding season.
4. Snail Kite. This fowl feeds solely on snails, particularly apple snails. Just lately, non-native snails have been launched to Florida. However, these raptors are consuming these snails, too. These predators hover over marshes and canals. Their curved beaks are barely off-centre, to allow them to simply extract the snails from their shells.
5. Snowy Egret. Birders simply establish this white wader by its “dainty yellow slippers”. I usually see them alongside the seashore, hanging round individuals fishing, hoping to steal a chunk.
6. Magnificent Frigate fowl. This piratical fowl harasses gulls, terns, and different birds, till they drop or regurgitate their meal, which is then snatched up by the frigate fowl. In flight, they give the impression of being each sinister and sumptuous, as they patrol the shorelines.
7. Purple Gallinule. This slender marsh fowl has yellow legs with lengthy toes, greenish higher elements, darkish blue head and underparts, blue frontal protect, and white undertail feathers. This fowl tiptoes throughout lily pads, because it searches for meals in freshwater marshes.
8. Crested Caracara. This massive, terrestrial raptor (pictured at prime of this text) is most carefully associated to falcons, nevertheless it acts like a vulture. It feeds totally on carrion. It may be present in rubbish dumps, the place it’s king of the heap. Different foragers keep away from this massive bully.
9. Tufted Titmouse. SW Florida doesn’t have chickadees. This small, full of life fowl fills that area of interest, sounding the alarm when predators are round.
10. Brown Pelican. These massive seabirds might be seen perched on pilings or in mangroves. It’s superb to see them flying simply inches above the ocean. I like to look at them hunt, as they crash headfirst into the water. They really land on their shoulders, so that they don’t knock themselves foolish.
Subtropical SW Florida presents me so many nice birds to see, as I discover swamps, marshes and even the nation landfill.
Word: The bunting and pelican photographs by the Kinrys household. The 2 kite and the gallinule photographs are from Wikimedia Commons. The remaining photographs are from Pexels.com, a web based supply of copyright-free photographs.