Florida Everglades 2014 - Day 2

This morning, we stopped by Toojay’s Deli and picked up salads (for us girls obviously) and sandwiches (for the boys, again, obviously) for lunch before we headed out to bird.  The deli is also a bakery, so I picked up some yummy rugalach (cinnamon, apricot, raspberry, almond and chocolate – oh and the chocolate one is the best) for a snack and then I saw that they had cheese blintzes!  I love cheese blintzes!  If you are ever in Jupiter, FL, I would highly recommend you visit Toojay’s Deli.

With lunch in hand, we headed to Bob and Jan’s campground in Lake Worth.  As we pulled into the campground we drove along a canal and saw this handsome anhinga posing for photographers.

We also saw and heard several Boat-tailed Grackles.  They’re everywhere! I just love their call.

Bob and Jan had seen several Limpkin the day before, so we decided to hang out at the park and see what we could pick up.  There were several Loggerhead Shrike in the park

and we think the reason they are here is because there a quite a few lizards here and that the Limpkins and Snail Kites are eating the Apple Snails in the lake at the campground.

The wetlands opposite the lake are full of life.  We saw Little Blue Herons

several Wood Storks

and 5 Limpkin.

Jan found this American Bittern –which is a real find because you rarely see bitterns.  These birds blend in so well with their surroundings that you usually walk right by them.

We have also seen many palm trees with concentric rings of holes in them indicating the presence of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.  It wasn’t long until the bird showed up and started making new holes in a nearby palm.

We ate our lunch at the park and ran into some gals from the Everglades Audubon Society doing a bird count.

They suggested that we head to Palm Beach to get Black-headed Parrots.  We had no idea what those were – we'd never heard of them!  But, we drove over to Palm Beach Island anyway.  We walked along the River Walk 

and birded the Henry Flagler Estate.  But, no parrots of any kind.

We did find this way cool Banyan Tree.

and a pretty cool spider, that we can’t identify.

After looking down every street and alley in the neighborhood (this is a VERY expensive neighborhood – lots of BMWs, Mercedes and Lexus cars)

We came up empty.  No parrots.  So, we headed back to the campground to pick up Bob and Jan’s camper and move it to our new home in Florida City.  As we pulled back into the campground we ran into the gals doing the bird count and they told us that the black-headed parrots were right there in the field!  We jumped out of the car, and sure enough, there in the lawn were about 20 Black-hooded Parakeets, which the US calls Nanaday Parakeet.

On our way to Florida City we decided to stop in at the Matheson Hammock County Park to find the LaSagra’s Flycatcher that had been reported on the Rare Bird Alert.  Not five minutes in the park and Dave heard it’s “wink” and followed the sound to the bird.  We ran into a guy from Illinois named Matt, who had just found it too!

Just down the trail was a nesting pair of Red-masked Parakeets checking out a nest hole.

It was quite a successful day, and we have now seen 84 bird species in 2 days of birding South Florida.  We headed to Applebee’s to watch the Colts/Kansas City game and then checked into our new hotel in Florida City.  A long, and very productive day!