The Snail Kite was reported again this morning by Kathleen Coates of Tallahassee and Kathy Brown of Maryland. As will be obvious to those who’ve seen this bird or photographs of it, the subject line of my last birding report was incorrect. I assumed that the Snail Kite that visited us in March had returned, but the March bird was an adult male, while this one appears to be a female that’s at least a year old (it has a reddish iris, and immature birds of both sexes have a brown iris). So this is the county’s fifth ever. They’re getting to be a nuisance, aren’t they?
I made an inquiry about the Whooping Crane with the blue band that’s been hanging around Paynes Prairie since at least April 21st. Tim Dellinger of FWC replied: “The individual you saw is one of ~12 remaining birds in the Florida non-migratory population. This crane is a female and was hatched in Lake County in 2006 by captive reared cranes that had been released in central Florida in the 1990s. Since releases and research have stopped, the FWC monitors Whooping Cranes opportunistically and greatly appreciates sightings from the public.” Tim added that she is one of only three or four surviving individuals produced by a wild pair in Florida: “Yes indeed, a true Florida Whooping Crane. There’s another wild female that hangs out near Lake Kissimmee part of the year and Lake Okeechobee the other part; she was hatched in 2004. In 2009, a female fledged from a Lake Toho nest to the pasture behind the Lake Wales Cemetery, but we haven’t seen her in a while and she may be dead. Another crane fledged last year from Lake County and she is now in northern Marion County. Among all the Florida-fledged birds (around 14 over the years) all but a couple have been female. One Lake County pair continues to breed when conditions are right, they have produced at least one chick over the past few years and some have survived to fledging. Unfortunately since there are so few birds remaining they are often on their own or hanging out with Sandhills and most do not survive long. As a side note, I flew over the Lake Toho area this week and saw the mother of the bird you reported. She is 17 years old and now paired with a 16 year old male. Both have been productive in the past with other mates and hopefully they will produce a chick in the future. The oldest bird alive in the Florida non-migratory population was among the first released and she is 23 years old, hanging out on a ranch in Polk County.”
Birders don’t always pay close attention to nesting herons, egrets, or ibises, partly because we don’t want to disturb rookeries and partly because it’s very difficult to simultaneously make identifications and estimate numbers as the birds fly in and out. Maybe that’s why I can’t find any record of Glossy Ibises nesting in Alachua County more recently than a note written by the museum’s then-curator of birds, Oliver Austin, Jr., in 1967, “After a long absence the species appeared in the Lake Alice heronry in 1936, and Charles E. Doe collected 11 sets of eggs between April 23, and May 27. It last nested at Lake Alice in 1958, when five pairs were present. Some thirty pairs nested on Payne’s Prairie west of route 441 in April, 1965.” Nothing in the 51 years since then. Until, maybe, this year. On the 20th Mike Manetz wrote, “I was out at La Chua today and saw a Glossy Ibis carrying nesting material … appeared to be a stick or woody vine. I viewed it from just south of Old Sweetwater [the trail’s hairpin turn] and watched until it disappeared roughly in the direction of Sweetwater Wetlands.” On the 26th Mike was back at La Chua and again saw a Glossy carrying nesting material. There appears to be a very populous wading-bird rookery east of Sweetwater. Is anyone at FWC or Paynes Prairie monitoring it using Special Wildlife Observation Techniques™?
An Eastern Kingbird has been hanging around the La Chua observation platform for about a week. First noted by Adam and Gina Kent on May 24th, it’s been there ever since, calling, chasing other birds and being chased in turn. Typically Eastern Kingbirds are upland birds, so its odd to see one out in the middle of a freshwater marsh.