Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Lake's Park: Into the Pines and Palms

The most bizarre and perplexing Florida habitat, for me, is the combination pine and palm forests. I don't know if these habitats are transplants, offspring from transplants/terraforming or just natural to the area, but seeing the two trees growing side by side is very strange. In Arizona, you don't really find pines naturally below 5,000 feet, and since palms don't grow here naturally, they're only ever in residential areas.
Anyway, there was a swathe of this interesting pine and palm mixture at the afore mentioned Lake's Park. While they didn't have roosting herons or Gallinules, I was still hurting from the fact that, after three days of birding, I had only found three warbler species. Where better for Pine and Palm Warblers to be that in a pine palm forest?


The dense foliage was perforated with dirt trails, most of which were overgrown/underused. There was plenty of nature noise, always an encouraging sign, but not a lot of visibility. One call was particularly repetitive. It was familiar, and yet unlike any call I could recognize. At this point in the trip, I had been surrounded by serenading Wrens and Cardinals enough to know their sounds, and this was different, though similar to the latter. Most excitingly, it was clearly coming from lower in the brush, so I might actually have a chance to see and photograph a non heron/egret bird on the trip. I still needed Brown Thrasher, and maybe it'd be a migrating Thrush or something else super cool!

With beads of sweat reaching critical mass and trailing down my face, I stalked and creeped with great skill (don't ask me how I became a skilled stalker/creeper) until I zeroed in on the vocalizing bird. I pushed down a palm frond, peered through an opening and...


FOILED! This doe-eyed immature Cardinal was practicing/butchering the Cardinal song. He'd thrown me for a loop. I'll admit, he's pretty darn cute, but Cardinal was not atop my list of Florida Must See birds. I couldn't spend too long sulking. A racket broke out in the canopy of nearby Slash Pine (?) trees, with three bellicose Blue Jays mobbing a raptor and robbing it of its perch.
You can see the raptor's tail feathers in the photo below. Any guesses???



After an hours of humid hiking I had little to show for my efforts, but the foray into the pines did allow for a brief photo shoot with a Blue Jay--perhaps one of the aggravated assault offenders from before--when it perched on a hand rail (many on the trails in Florida seem to be constructed with the pre-conceieved notion that everyone hiking them will fall and drown in the mud if there aren't handrails).


I must ashamedly admit, this is the first time I've photographed a Blue Jay. True enough, you won't see them in Arizona, but between Pennsylvania and four years in Dallas, well...there's no excuse, only recompense. It was a fun little detour, but at this point I had resigned myself to the reality that all the best birding and photography was to be done at the water's edge. That's where we'll head next.

12 comments:

  1. Nice post and some great photos. There is one place that immediately comes to mind with palms and pines sided by side in AZ, but both stands of these trees were human planted, BTA. But, I do agree, they look a little out of place when together.

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    1. mm fair point Gordon. I remember thinking that as well, but I have only been to BTA one time!
      I really should remedy that. I was going to hit it up this spring, but the Williamson's had moved on... : )

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  2. Hope your'e having fun in Florida! I'm sure you'll get yourself a Pine Warbler in Pine forests. Northern Parulas and Common Yellowthroats are around too. You may even get lucky and find a Prothonotary Warbler. But I'm afraid that Palm Warblers have left us until Fall.

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    1. Hey Scott,

      There posts are all coming from early May, when I was in the Naples area for 4 days. Unfortunately, I never did turn up more than Pine, Parula, and Yellowthroat.
      Always a reason to go back...

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    2. Ah, makes sense. Yea, those are the three I see here regularly this time of year.

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  3. I still need a good Blue Jay photo, Laurence. Unfortunately, I wasn't photographing birds while I grew up in Kentucky and was surrounded by them. And, despite seeing loads of them in Kentucky while growing up, I still don't have a legitimate Red-headed Woodpecker on my eBird life list, let alone a photo, since I can't pin down dates and locations from those distant experiences. Is that the tail of a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk?

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    1. I know what you mean Jeff. The number of close up shots I could've had in Dallas (if I had a camera, and/or the motivation) makes me cringe.

      Good thinking on the Red-shouldered, especially as they're like the preeminent raptor in Florida.
      It's the tail of a Great-Horned Owl, disturbed from his afternoon ciesta : )

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  4. Don't be embarrassed:) I have felt the same way about many of the birds back home in Wisconsin. I still have yet to get back there and ID them. I've found several of my neighbors on EBIRD and when I go home again, I'll be hooking up with them to find that Blue Jay you've just posted along with several hundred other birds I never really paid attention to while I grew up there. The joys of jumping back in time:)

    Visibility and green things were an issue for me as well these past several weeks. Heard lots of birds but I had a heck of a time trying to ID the sound with the bird. But once I did, the game got easier. I'm loving your posts. Hope you're healing up.

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    1. Thanks Chris,

      I hope your trip has been truly wonderful. I expect you'll share it with us!?!?!?! : )
      Looking forward to it.

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    2. Laurence, he'll share it IF he ever stops birding long enough!

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    3. Okay okay.....I've called it quits for a week to recharge up for Gordon next weekend. I need to let the body rest. It has been a little crazy. Last year I complained about the summer being too hot but this year I've just been going to higher elevations.....so I've discovered loopholes:) Travel and mountains! But seriously my Aunt is in town and I need to clean my house.....so there's that:)

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  5. Ha! It's good to know you can still be fooled! (and foiled!) Nice shots of the birds though. Love the blue jay. Living in AZ actually makes me miss them when I go home to CT.

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