Laura Gaudette saw a Brown Pelican at the north end of Newnans Lake on the afternoon of the 5th.
Spring-migrant passerines have been pretty sparse, but on the 5th Debbie Segal saw a Cape May Warbler and a rare-in-spring Swainson’s Thrush at Bolen Bluff; on the 5th Ryan Terrill saw a Blackpoll Warbler and 2 American Redstarts on the UF campus; and on the 4th Martin and Holly Bern saw a Rose-breasted Grosbeak at Newnans Lake State Forest on the trail east of State Road 26 (officially called the Lake Pithlachocco Trailhead). On the 2nd Bob Carroll and I also walked the Lake Pithlachocco Trail, seeing 4 American Redstarts, 1 Cape May Warbler, 1 Black-throated Blue Warbler, and 1 Ovenbird, but I’m linking to my eBird checklist mainly so you can see the photo of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird that Bob found building a nest: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S36483807
On the afternoon of the 4th Mike Manetz and I checked out the Newnans Lake shorebird situation in advance of the rain (which caught us ten minutes before we got back to the car). Starting at the Windsor boat ramp we walked south about two and a half miles through knee-high grass and weeds, which will probably be waist high by next week. We were hoping for something really exciting, but our best birds were a flock of 31 breeding-plumage Stilt Sandpipers, a Semipalmated Plover, and a White-rumped Sandpiper. Lloyd Davis, walking east from Powers Park on the 5th, did a smidge better, with 38 Stilt Sandpipers and 2 White-rumpeds. Though Least Sandpipers are still common – I counted 112 – other species are present only in single and low double digits: 12 Semipalmated Sandpipers, 4 Long-billed Dowitchers, 1 Solitary Sandpiper, 1 Greater Yellowlegs, and 11 Lesser Yellowlegs. Or possibly they’ve moved to the north end of the lake. Has anyone walked in from Gum Root Swamp recently?
Speaking of shorebirds, Linda Hensley and her cousin Polly Wimberly reported seeing the Ruff from Powers Park on the 3rd. That was the first report since the 27th, another reason to think that shorebirds may be congregating somewhere besides the southeastern shore of the lake.
Sunday’s field trip to Powers Park and Palm Point put quality over quantity. We didn’t see a single migrant warbler, possibly because it was another extremely windy day and possibly because they’re just not here. But we did see three Short-tailed Hawks rise up out of the trees along the shoreline between Powers and Lakeshore Drive and drift in our direction until we got close looks at two of them, one hanging up there so still that we were able to put him in the scope as if he were perched. At Palm Point we saw the grisly sight of Black Vultures eating another Black Vulture who was still alive (!). On a more cheerful note, we also saw a pair of Laughing Gulls fly over the road, the nest of a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, and yet another Short-tailed Hawk (probably one of the three from Powers) hanging in the air until we’d ogled him to our hearts’ content.
For the past two or three summers, American Robins have nested in Geoff Parks’s NE Gainesville neighborhood. This year he hadn’t noticed a robin since April 5th, and he assumed that the breeding pair had left and wouldn’t be back. But on the evening of the 5th, “to my surprise, as I was heading down 6th Terrace from 23rd Avenue, one was singing loud and clear to the east.”
Tom Webber reports that the American Kestrel nest across the street from the Gainesville Police Department seems to have failed: “I last saw the male on 24 April, the female on 28 April. I’ve checked ten times since the 28th.”
Debora Greger forwarded this article about Europe’s first-ever Red-winged Blackbird. In Florida we ignore them as best we can. In Scotland they charter airplanes to get a look at one: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/01/birdwatchers-flock-orkney-catch-glimpse-american-red-winged-blackbird?CMP=share_btn_link