The Tricolored Heron is a sleek and slender heron adorned in blue-gray, lavender, and white.
The white stripe down the middle of its sinuous neck and its white belly set it apart from other dark herons.
This fairly small heron wades through coastal waters in search of small fish, often running and stopping with quick turns and starts, as if dancing in a ballet.
It’s common in southern saltmarshes and was once known as the Louisiana Heron. Cornell All About Birds
It builds stick nests in trees and shrubs, often in colonies with other wading birds.
I thought this week we would take a look at some of the birds we have observed on our Florida birding trips. We have been visiting Cape San Blas in the Florida Panhandle for the last 12 years and every couple of years take an extended birding trip down the ocean seaboard to Everglades National Park and back up the gulf side hitting some of the major Florida birding sites along the way.
Among the most elegant of the herons, the slender Snowy Egret sets off immaculate white plumage with black legs and brilliant yellow feet.
Those feet seem to play a role in stirring up or herding small aquatic animals as the egret forages.
Breeding Snowy Egrets grow filmy, curving plumes that once fetched astronomical prices in the fashion industry, endangering the species.
Early conservationists rallied to protect egrets by the early twentieth century, and this species is once again a common sight in shallow coastal wetlands.
Cornell All About Birds
Least Flycatchers are the smallest Empidonax flycatcher in the East. Like other flycatchers they tend to perch upright, but they appear a little more compact than most.
The primary feathers on their wings are short, which makes their thin tail look longer. Their head is round and is not peaked at the back of the head like some other Empidonax. Cornell All About Birds
A compact, small flycatcher with a big-eyed look and a big head that sometimes shows a peak at the rear. It has a short tail and a small but wide bill.
Yellowish olive overall with a strong white eyering and two whitish wingbars. It has yellowish underparts all the way from its chin to its lower belly.
The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher perches in the lower and middle levels of dense forests, from which it quickly flies out to grab insects in midair or from the vegetation. When perched it nervously turns its head and sometimes gently flicks its tail. Cornell All About Birds
The Blue-headed Vireo offers a pleasing palette of moss green, bluish gray, and greenish yellow, set off by bold white “spectacles” (the eyering plus a “loral” spot next to the bill), throat, and belly.
The wings and tail are a sharp black and white. Like most larger vireos, Blue-headed forages for insects and their larvae in trees, moving deliberately along branches, where it can be challenging to spot.
Males sing a slow, cheerful carol, often the first indication of the species’ presence in a forest. Cornell All About Birds
A tireless songster, the Red-eyed Vireo is one of the most common summer residents of Eastern forests. These neat, olive-green and white songbirds have a crisp head pattern of gray, black, and white.
Their brief but incessant songs—sometimes more than 20,000 per day by a single male—contribute to the characteristic sound of an Eastern forest in summer.
When fall arrives, they head for the Amazon basin, fueled by a summer of plucking caterpillars from leaves in the treetops. Cornell All About Birds
The rich song of the Warbling Vireo is a common sound in many parts of central and northern North America during summer. It’s a great bird to learn by ear, because its fast, rollicking song is its most distinctive feature.
Warbling Vireos are fairly plain birds with gray-olive upperparts and white underparts washed with faint yellow. They have a mild face pattern with a whitish stripe over the eye.
They stay high in deciduous treetops, where they move methodically among the leaves hunting for caterpillars. Cornell All About Birds
I'm glad so many readers enjoyed last months topic, birds and wildlife of the Caribbean. Before we move off to our next adventure I thought I'd cover some of the recent local birds we've observed.
The slight, almost dainty Philadelphia Vireo is fairly common in dense young woodlands of Canada’s boreal summertime. Smaller, shorter-billed, and less aggressive than a Red-eyed Vireo, this olive-brown bird moves methodically through upper reaches of young trees searching for caterpillars.
Although similar to the widespread Warbling Vireo, it’s usually yellower below with a bolder head pattern.
The song is a rising-and-falling series of short whistles, quite different from Warbling but very similar to Red-eyed, making this species both a challenge and a prize to find during migration. Cornell All About Birds
As a closer for the Caribbean blogs I thought it would be fitting to feature our observation of a Bushmaster pit viper.
At the time we visited Trinidad, cruisers were advised not to go ashore and if you did, not to leave the touristy compound. However, we had previously arranged for a guide to take us up into the mountains to the ASA Wright Nature Center, one of the premiere birding sights in the Caribbean.
The highlight of that trip, besides all the hummingbirds, was a Bushmaster pit viper curled up trailside.
Bushmasters hunt at night and have heat-sensing pits on each side of their head midway between the nostril and eye, which helps them to locate warm-blooded prey.
National Geographic says the bushmaster has a bite so venomous that humans only have a 25% chance of surviving one.
Snakes will pop up on future blogs, especially in our Florida travels, however our most impressive snake was our encounter with a 25’ Anaconda in the Amazon. Definitely a future blog.
The Green Iguana is found all over the Caribbean and I must admit on my first trip to the Caribbean I was totally enthralled watching these prehistoric looking creatures.
