Space Coasting

Limpkin at Viera Wetlands near Cocoa, FL.

I feel only a little bit guilty for escaping the single-digit temperatures of southeastern Ohio this week for the relatively balmy temps along Florida's east coast. It's time once again for the annual Space Coast Birding & Nature Festival in Titusville, FL. This is one of the top events in the annual calendar of birding festivals. Its location is ideal for birding with great habitat and dynamic—even endangered—bird species nearby. Its timing in late January often coincides with the first days of winter despair for those of us who live in the rusty snow belt of the upper Midwest. And the folks who run the fest are just really nice and accommodating. Bird Watcher's Digest has been a sponsor of this birding festival since its inception.

Ruddy turnstone in winter plumage.

Oh, the reason it's called the Space Coast Birding & Nature Festival is because NASA's Cape Canaveral launch facility is located nearby. All those Apollo missions and Space Shuttle launches started from right here.

Florida scrub-jay.

 Two of my favorite birding locations during the festival are Viera Wetlands and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Both locations are a short drive from the community college auditorium and campus where the festival has its base. And both places offer amazing opportunities for birding, bird photography, and for appreciating the incredible natural diversity of this part of The Sunshine State. Brevard County certainly has its heavily developed areas but it also has a significant amount of protected natural habitat—and wherever this habitat occurs, it's as birdy as heck.

Least bittern photographed at Viera Wetlands.

 The last time I made the scene at Space Coast, I was accompanied by daughter Phoebe (then in 8th grade) and we spent several days visiting schools to take classrooms of her fellow 8th graders out birding. This was super fun!

 Phoebe also helped me at the book signings for The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of Eastern North America which she and her classmates at Salem Liberty Elementary helped me conceptualize and write. That's my friend and editor Lisa White from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the photo above. She was probably coaching me on how to spell my name properly during the book signing... B-I-L-L...

 On two separate afternoons, Phoebe and I escaped to the beach at Canaveral National Seashore. She was longing to see the ocean. It was cold, but we still took off our shoes and socks and rolled up our pants legs and raced into the surf.

 

 

 

 

Phoebe and me on the beach.

In fact I think it's safe to see that seeing that Phoebe on the beach just as happy and free as she could be was my favorite bird sighting of the entire week!

Do yourself a favor and visit The Space Coast Birding & Nature Festival's website and then make plans for your own late-January escape to Florida's Atlantic coast.

Phoebe's Special Birding Adventure

 

 During our recent family sojourn in South Texas as part of the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival, I was really happy to see daughter Phoebe (age 16) finally really get into bird watching. And because Phoebe was into it, her younger brother Liam (just turned 13) also got into it, though at a somewhat lower intensity level.

Both kids had exceptional birding moments during our six days in Texas, but it's Phoebe's experience that I'll relate here. Liam's we'll share another day.

Julie and I'd been working during the festival as guides and speakers and the kids came along where space was available. They went along on one of Julie's trips and helped me with the large group of young birders on Saturday morning. Then on Sunday we all got to be together on a Breakfast with the Birds trip to a local private ranch called Rio Costero. Al Batt was one of the other guides and he and Liam kept up a constant banter about going "squatchin'." (This means they were going hunting in the South Texas scrub for sasquatch.)

Birding a resaca at Rio Costero.

The ranch was amazing, the birding was engaging, and the breakfast was so good that we all ate too much. After taking the group bus back to Harlingen, our family hopped in the rental car and headed for South Padre Island. We'd promised the kids an afternoon at the beach—they'd never seen the Gulf of Mexico. Well, actually Phoebe had, as a three-year old, but that doesn't really count.

 Being at the beach was really fun. We frolicked in the surf despite a fairly strong undertow. We body-surfed and splashed and ran. The kids asked us to take photos of them leaping with joy.

It was hard to leave the beach, but time was winding down and there was another place, across the street from the beach access, that I wanted to visit: the boardwalk adjacent to the South Padre Island Convention Center. This boardwalk and the natural and human-enhanced habitat around it is a famous birding hotspot. In early spring the birding action is in the small trees between the start of the boardwalk and the convention center. I once did a Big Sit here during the Texas Birding Classic and it was crazy birdy. This being November, the best birding was out in the marsh through which the boardwalk winds.

 Immediately we began seeing and calling out bird after bird: northern pintail, green-winged and blue-winged teal, shovelers, Forster's and royal terns, tricolored heron, little blue heron, roseate spoonbill, American avocet, black-necked stilts. I was pleased at how many of these species Phoebe knew on her own. Liam was riffing on the birds' names—as newly minted teenaged boys are apt to do—and cracking himself up in the process.

Moments before Phoebe's great bird sighting.

We ran into a small flock of familiar Ohio birders who had found an American bittern, which they were kind enough to share with us. Phoebe really like this one and we began telling her some of the natural history of the species. She even recalled seeing them before on our annual trip to North Dakota.

American bittern.

 Twenty or so minutes later, as we were turning around to head back to the car, Phoebe stopped, raised her binocs and pointed, saying "What's THAT bird? Is it another bittern? It looks smaller."
Umm. YES Phoebe, that's a least bittern!

Phoebe's least bittern!

WOW! A two-bittern day! We watched the least bittern fishing for about 40 minutes. We took photos and video. And we reached our Ohio birdpals by cellphone and returned their earlier bittern favor.

Watching the least bittern.

 I can't accurately convey how happy and proud these few moments made me. We've never pushed our kids to get into birding. Sure, we've have forced them out of bed in the wee hours regularly in their lifetimes just to bring them along with us on birding trips. And we've thrust expensive optical instruments into their tiny hands and implored them to get a good look at some fabulous bird or other. But we've never forced them to become bird watchers. Now it seems the metamorphosis is happening naturally. [Which was ALL part of our evil plan from the beginning!]

Phoebe keeping the trip bird list on our Breakfast with the Birds field trip.

Phoebe is already there. It might take Liam a bit longer. It would help if we could just get one good look at a sasquatch. Now THAT would be a lifer!

Angry Birds

The new Nature's Classroom facility at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.

I was down in the Florida panhandle a while ago, helping to open a wonderful new building at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge called "Nature's Classroom." This facility will serve as a resource for area residents, teachers, students, birders, photographers, and nature enthusiasts, giving them a place to meet, learn, explore, and a base from which to enjoy St. Marks NWR.

Some of the team responsible for the new Nature's Classroom building at the ribbon-cutting.

While there I gave three talks and lead a couple of bird walks, one of which was on the Plum Orchard Trail behind Nature's Classroom. We had 30 or so folks along, including some keen young bird watchers, and the birding was fairly good, considering it was a hot, muggy afternoon. We had lots of red-eyed vireos, eastern kingbirds, a green heron, immature white ibis, little blue heron, tricolored heron, pine warbler, four woodpecker species, and a noisy flock of brown-headed nuthatches. But the most interesting sighting happened right at the end of the walk on the sandy pool of water behind Nature's Classroom.

As we returned on the loop trail, one of our group spotted two shorebirds out on the pool. We initially thought they were spotted sandpipers because there were lots of spotties around and because they were teetering their tails the way that spotted sandpiper often do. But as they came out of the vegetation and walked closer it was clear that they were the larger solitary sandpiper. And they were really behaving weirdly: running around excitedly, bobbing almost constantly, looking into the grass.

Solitary sandpipers doing their best Angry Birds impression.

That was when the object of their attention slithered into view: a banded water snake came gliding toward the birds. The birds seemed to be conflicted about this: should they run or should they fight? As soon as the snake would head away from them, the solitaries would chase it. If the snake came toward them, they scampered away. Certainly the snake was too large for them to kill and eat, and I'm not sure that the snake could have subdued the sandpipers, so they were left to perform pantomime parries and thrusts with no actual attacks.

The whole scene lasted just a few minutes, but it was interesting to watch. I guessed that these birds might have been youngsters migrating south with the fall, and this might have been their first snake encounter.

Solitaries and the water snake.

This was my first trip to St. Marks—one of our oldest national wildlife refuges. What a fantastic place it is! I'm certain I'll be back again for another visit.

Paying it Forward

Dear Fellow Bird Watchers:

Now that spring is here, or will be soon, I have a suggestion for how you can help to make the world a better place. Consider doing this: Volunteer your time to lead a bird walk for kids or new bird watchers. There's no better way to share the joy of being a bird watcher than to help another human open his or her eyes to the wonders of birds.

Remember how you felt the first time you "sparked" on birds? And remember all the help you got as a new bird watcher? Birding mentors, bird club friends, and helpful individuals are the people that welcome us into the community of bird watchers, encouraging our interest and enthusiasm, sharing their knowledge, and—perhaps most importantly—inviting us along to go birding. Without those invitations, our interest in birds might never have blossomed.

Every spring, Julie and I go to the local elementary school and take several of the classes outside to look at birds. The school is in a rural setting, so all we really have to do is step outside and pass out the binoculars or set up the spotting scopes. The birds do the rest.

Last Wednesday, we took the school's after-school Science Club out for an hour. The results were awesome! More than a dozen species seen well, just a few steps from the playground, including some species and observations worth noting: The American kestrel pair is again nesting in the barn on the west border of the school. Six black vultures added further confirmation of this species' ongoing range expansion into our part of Ohio. An eastern meadowlark sang all around us, going from tree to wire to fence, marking the boundaries of his territory. And two first-of-spring sightings seemed to be our reward just for being outside on April's first warm evening: barn swallow and osprey.



It was a grand experience and the kids thanked us over and over again. We even had a few parents join us! Who knows? Maybe we showed a spark bird to one or two youngsters. And that is the whole point. I feel like I am paying back the kind souls who encouraged my interest in birds way back in the mid-1970s. Wow! That's 40 years ago! I'd love to think that in 2051 one of these kids—now all grown up to adulthood—might be inviting a group of youngsters out for a bird walk, remembering all the fun we had and all the neat birds we saw and heard.

It's the BEST time of year to be outside with the birds, folks. Being a bird watcher is one of life's most renewable gifts. Consider paying it forward, won't you?

Phoebe's First Alligator

An idealized portrayal of Phoebe's first alligator.

I'm taking a bit of artistic license here in using the above image of an alligator to represent my daughter Phoebe's first encounter with one of these large aquatic, carnivorous reptiles. The actual photo of her life 'gator is the one below, which Ms. Phoebe digiscoped herself. [Special thanks to the eagle-eyed Lisa White, a native Florida cracker, who spotted this gator for us in a canal at Merritt Island NWR.]

The actual first gator.

It was not a very satisfying look at the first gator. It only had its head above water. After about three minutes, it removed even that small bit of itself, slowing sinking into the murky water. The three of us spent the rest of the morning driving around, certain we'd see another gator—perhaps one out on a bank soaking in the sun on this very cool Florida morning. But we were denied.

So we went to the beach.

Soaking our feet in the chilly Atlantic—they went numb in about 30 seconds. Photo by Lisa White.

Two days later Phoebe and I were headed back to the beach when we saw a turn off for Eco Pond Road. I'd remembered seeing and photographing a massive alligator on that road two years before, so we turned off for a side gator hunt. Just two miles later, I spotted our gator, lounging in the back of a lagoon, covered in duckweed. I told Phoebe to get out and stand on the bank in front of the gator (which was at least 60 feet away) so I could take her photo with her first look at a complete American alligator.

The gator is half in and half out of the shade along the far bank of the lagoon.

She agreed to pose for the photo, but could not help cringing when I raised the camera to my eye and said "Awesome! He's coming closer!"

A closer look at Phoebe's first full-view gator.

After manatees, seeing an alligator was next on Phoebe's most-wanted list. The fact that we also added bobcat and armadillo was icing on the already rich and delicious cake.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my good friends at The Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival for inviting Phoebe and me down to Titusville, and for making us feel so welcome. It was an unforgettable experience for us and it reminded me how completely lucky I am to be a Dad.

Our last gator of the trip, spotted somewhere near Christmas, FL. That's Phoebe being chomped.

When the Birding Gets Slow

Phoebe and I made a bunch of appearances at middle schools in north Brevard County near Titusville as part of the Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival. We were trying to encourage some of the students—all near Phoebe's age—to consider birding as a fun, cool thing to do. We gave a half-dozen talks and lead a half-dozen walks. And I believe we made a few new birders.

The talks all went really well (I am so proud of the Phoebster for taking to public speaking so easily) and so did most of the walks. After all, it's hard not to see lots of birds in January in Florida. But it happens...

One of the schools we visited had a fairly bad bird walk due to an almost complete lack of birds. Oh sure we had some distant pepper specks int he sky (vultures) and some flyover American robins plus a few returning purple martins, but other than that we struck out. And I gotta tell you that I can keep any group of kids interested and under control as long as there are birds to show them. Preferably perched birds that we can get the spotting scope on. Even the rowdiest bully (of which we encountered none at the schools we visited) will go "Wow! That's AWEsome!" when shown a zoomed-in look at a northern mockingbird or any other species for that matter.

We scanned in all directions. Not even a single mocker was present!

But at this school it was the doldrums of the afternoon with an approaching storm and the birds were all taking a siesta. Consequently the kids were becoming restless. After all it was Friday afternoon and this was their last class of the week. One group of boys began showing off by reenacting scenes from a war movie or video game. Girls began gathering into small groups to chat about the boys. Only a few students stuck with Phoebe and me, asking questions about birds, the book, us. The teacher began to tire of trying to keep control. I sensed my grip on the class slipping away.

That's when Mother Nature stepped in to save us. Someone screamed "AHHHH! SNAKE!!" and we watched as a tiny brown snake with a pale orange and black pattern on its back slithered into the middle of a group of 8th graders.

I'm glad it was a small, calm snake. I would've hated to try to wrestle an excaped exotic boa constrictor.

The snake quickly realized it was surrounded, so it raced into the only dark hole it could find: inside the sole of a girl's tennis show. Lucky for the snake, which one young man shyly ID'd as a juvenile corn snake, the girl remained calm while we removed her shoe.


We all got a look at the snake curled up inside the open tread of the sole. The "Cool!" and "Sweet!" and "Awesome" comments drifted through the sultry afternoon air.

Phoebe was not so sure this was fun.

After everyone got a good look, I gently removed the snake and let it go in the grass.

Trying to coax the corn snake out of the shoe sole.

We strolled back to the school, retrieved the loaner binoculars (many heartfelt thanks for the bins to Eagle Optics and The Enchanted Forest), answered a few final questions, and said our goodbyes. Phoebe and I signed a copy of "The Young Birder's Guide" for the school's library, and hit the road. I'll bet that book gets checked out a few times this spring.

We'd seen fewer than five bird species on this bird walk, but, thanks to a snake in the grass, it was still a big success.

Phoebe & The Young Birder's Guide

Phoebe with her copy of the Young Birder's Guide at the New River Birding Festival.

The thing I'm most proud of in my career as a bird content guy is the Young Birder's Guide which I wrote with the help of my daughter Phoebe's elementary school class. The book has gotten quite a bit of notice from the media and seems to be doing a good job connecting with its target audience (8- to 12-year-olds). Working with Phoebe and her schoolmates was the best.

Phoebs and I recently were interviewed by Mark Lynch, host of the excellent radio show Inquiry on public radio station WICN-FM in Boston. The interview is now available on WICN's website. To give us a listen, go here.

Clearly, during the interview, I talk way too much and Phoebe—not enough. Phoebster, next time I promise to give you more airtime, babe.

The "Inquiry" page on the WICN website.

Share the joy of birds with a young person with the YBG.

If you live anywhere near western Maryland, south-central Pennsylvania, or eastern West Virginia, and are looking for something birdy to do this weekend, come watch birds with us at The Berkeley Springs Fall Birding Festival. This is the first year of what is planned to be an annual event. I am leading a bird walk for kids on Saturday morning and giving my "Perils & Pitfalls of Birding" talk on Saturday night.

Hope to see you there (or somewhere) soon!