South Florida: Residents, Rarities, and Exotics - Birding Tour
Tour Overview:
Florida offers some of the best and most entertaining birding in eastern North America. Exciting seabirds, like Magnificent Frigatebird, Brown and Black Noddy, Sooty Tern, and Brown and Masked Boobies on the Dry Tortugas, tame endemic Florida Scrub-Jays in the panhandle, and a bounty of reserves home to massive concentrations of waterbirds, like Reddish Egrets, “Great White Herons”, and Roseate Spoonbills. Marshes are also home to Purple Gallinules, Limpkins, Wood Storks and Anhingas, while Snail Kites watch on. The graceful Swallow-tailed Kites also calls Florida home. The Pine Flatwoods are perhaps less well known, where endangered species like Bachman’s Sparrow, Red-cockaded Woodpecker, and Brown-headed Nuthatch flaunt their wares. The tour will start and end in Miami, where exotic parrots, like Nanday and Monk Parakeets inhabit the suburbs. The tour takes in marshes, swamps, pine woods, mangroves, Oak hammocks, and the dramatic backdrop of the Florida Keys. The tour has been timed for spring, when temperatures are usually still pleasant, but the birding opportunities are at a premium, the wetland species are busy breeding, the seabirds are already nesting, and migrant birds are coursing through the region.