Florida or Bust!

Our flight to Florida left California at 10:30 on Good Friday evening. We hoped to sleep, but we only dozed in the flickering light of personal TV monitors and distant lightning over the Gulf of Mexico. When we arrived earlier than our forecasted 5:30 am arrival in Florida, the sun was still musing about whether or not to rise, but the excitement of being in a new place was as as good as coffee for keeping us awake for a little awhile, at least.

We hopped onto our rental car, and pulled out of the airport into a different world from our warm, dry home in California. Mist rising from the numerous ponds and fields obscured streetlights and blurred the fluorescent glow from building fronts as we pushed our way through the wet, warm night air south to Brinson Park in Kissimmee, Florida for our first stop.

Birding trips take you to out of the way places. Signs advertising turns to Disney World emerged from the ground fog as we zipped past them to the tiny park on the northern end of Lake Tohopekaliga. Stepping out into the parking lot, lit only by the gray lightening of the sky in the east that is the first harbinger of a new day, we heard our first new birds of the trip. Strange screaming wails rose from all around us. Limpkins - an ungainly nocturnal wading bird so strange it is in its own family all by itself - were talking to each other. (Listen to a clip of them at the MaCaulay library of sounds).

Waiting for the sun to rise, another unfamiliar sound floated down to our ears, the nasal calls of Fish Crows as flocks flew overhead, undoubtedly dispersing from some evening roost. Then, as the sky was tinged with pink, ratchety Boat-tailed Grackles joined the chorus. The sense of otherness from this cacophony of natural sounds was overwhelming. We were most definitely not in California anymore.

Then, as the sun began to rise, an Osprey flying over the road excited the object of our visit to this inauspicious patch of grass and a fishing dock - two small raptors rose up in challenge. We hurried across the road in time to see them coursing searchingly over the nearby reeds. Snail Kites can be a difficult species to find sometimes in Florida, but at Brinson Park a pair has taken up residence only a couple of hundred yards from the road. We enjoyed watching them catch and eat several large apple snails, and when the female landed in a tree only feet from us to eat her catch - the rising sun glowing through her outstretched wings - we could only catch our breath. These are the sorts of rich moments we pursue when we go looking for birds. Moments where the piercing richness of nature can break through even the groggy numbness of a sleepless night.

Snail Kite at dawn.

Of course, the day wasn't over. Next stop - Sedano's - the first supermarket we could find in Kissimee. We stocked up on the necessities for our trip's lunches and snacks, throwing a bag of cookies into the shopping cart with the happy anticipation of Easter the next day.

Then we were off to the Atlantic coast. Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge was acquired by the government as part of building the space program in Cape Canaveral. It hosts a lot of wading birds and ducks in the winter, and one of the largest populations of Florida Scrub-Jays in the state. We had lunch at the visitor's center, where we enjoyed our first Alligator of the trip, Painted Buntings, White-eyed Vireos, Northern Parulas and an Armadillo. Then we went for a hike on the short Scrub Ridge Trail, which was advertised as a sure bet for Scrub-Jays. Sure enough, we found some, though it wasn't as easy as we expected, and we also found a few hundred hungry mosquitoes.

Florida Scrub-Jay - a bird only found in Florida.

Our next priority was to attempt to see a Manatee. There's a shallow ledge on the Haulover Canal that we attempted, but we didn't see any from the viewing platform.

Having missed our turn and, as a result, the wildlife drive we had meant to travel, we ended up headed north to Ponce Inlet. Here we hoped to see Northern Gannets and Piping Plover, but we missed them both, though we saw our first ever Swallow-tailed Kite along the road! Instead, we happily found the second tallest lighthouse in the U.S. We enjoyed climbing over two hundred steps to the top platform and the resulting view.

Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse

Then we dipped our feet in the Atlantic Ocean (so we could say we had) and drove back to Orlando for the evening. It was a full day, but a rich one, and we were looking forward to Easter Sunday in the morning.