Quickly, we can be heading to Southwest Florida for the winter. The next are a number of the birds I eagerly stay up for seeing once more.
1. Roseate Spoonbill. Suppose pink! This chicken 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 this planet with colored plumage.
2. Painted Bunting. That is the “crayon-box” chicken. The male has a greenish yellow again, blue head with pink orbital ring, and pink underparts. An excellent place to see them is at Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. There are feeders outdoors the customer centre home windows, which the buntings go to commonly.
3. Swallow-tailed Kite. This chicken is a sublime flier, because it glides and swoops above the treetops. Their flight fashion reveals us why the youngsters’s toy is called after them. They return to SW Florida in mid-February, for the breeding season.
4. Snail Kite. This chicken feeds solely on snails, particularly apple snails. 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 determine this white wader by its “dainty yellow slippers”. I typically see them alongside the seaside, hanging round folks fishing, hoping to steal a chunk.
6. Magnificent Frigate chicken. This piratical chicken harasses gulls, terns, and different birds, till they drop or regurgitate their meal, which is then snatched up by the frigate chicken. In flight, they appear each sinister and luxurious, as they patrol the shorelines.
7. Purple Gallinule. This slender marsh chicken has yellow legs with lengthy toes, greenish higher components, darkish blue head and underparts, blue frontal defend, and white undertail feathers. This chicken tiptoes throughout lily pads, because it searches for meals in freshwater marshes.
8. Crested Caracara. This huge, terrestrial raptor (pictured at high of this text) is most intently associated to falcons, but it surely 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 large bully.
9. Tufted Titmouse. SW Florida doesn’t have chickadees. This small, energetic chicken fills that area of interest, sounding the alarm when predators are round.
10. Brown Pelican. These massive seabirds could be seen perched on pilings or in mangroves. It’s wonderful to see them flying simply inches above the ocean. I really like to look at them hunt, as they crash headfirst into the water. They really land on their shoulders, in order that they don’t knock themselves foolish.
Subtropical SW Florida gives me so many nice birds to see, as I discover swamps, marshes and even the nation landfill.
Observe: The bunting and pelican pictures by the Kinrys household. The 2 kite and the gallinule pictures are from Wikimedia Commons. The remaining pictures are from Pexels.com, a web-based supply of copyright-free pictures.
