Summer had been officially over for nearly half a day, and I had the day mostly free. The only limiting factor, I thought, was the predicted storms, which were supposed to hit at about 1 o’clock by my reading of the weather page. Normally I wouldn’t head out birding at 11 a.m. on a pretty warm day – early or late is generally my theory. But it was cloudy, which made it relatively cool.
I’m not much of a list keeper when I go out because I didn’t get into birdwatching for the paperwork. But I had a strange urge to see if I could pull off seeing 59 species in the two-ish hours before the rain came.
The first bird, not unexpectedly, was a mourning dove on a wire near the “People’s Fausto’s” on White Street. Then a pair of rock pigeons facing different directions on a wire in front of City Hall. At the park behind the Higgs Beach dog park, there was a white-crowned pigeon in an actual tree. Inside the fence where the FAA tower used to be was a snowy egret.
The pond in that part of the park is scraggly but can host a lot of different birds. On a branch just over the water a yellow-crowned night heron was at parade rest. In the buttonwood branches overhead, were a Eurasian collared dove and a white-winged dove, not consorting, but not avoiding each other, either. Higher up, a blue-gray gnatcatcher, a female black-throated blue warbler, a northern parula of indeterminate gender and a male American redstart. Just below the car door was a rooster. Chickens are domesticated animals, but for some reason they are countable birds in Key West.
When I put the car back into gear a northern mockingbird flew off toward the tennis courts and a trio of fish crows flew through the darkening sky making their kazoo-like caws.
From the other side of the towerless old FAA tower site I could see a small pond had formed and a trio of northern shovelers, with their stout shovel-shaped bills, paddled about as if they were in a kiddy pool. A male and female common yellowthroat perched in the holes in the chainlink. A white ibis came in and landed. Driving on, I caught sight of a pair of Eurasian starlings sitting on the fence, then a female red-winged blackbird in the mud.
Usually you see bathing-suited people hanging out at Higgs Beach no matter the weather — tourists bound and determined to get in their beach time — but it being the closest we get to an off-season, the beach was empty, the humans replaced by about 80 royal terns, 30 sandwich terns, and 20 laughing gulls.
I faced a decision then – head to Fort Zach to look for migrating warblers, or take the quicker trip over to Smathers Beach with the hope of some shorebirds. A great egret flew across the road as I headed east.
I stopped at Rest Beach and got out with the motor running, catching sight of a great white heron, which I’m going to count as a species no matter what the American Ornithological Society says. Below it, milling in the sargassum, were a dozen or so semi-palmated plovers, Ewoks to the heron’s AT-AT Walker. There was also a distant brown pelican. As I got back into the car I saw my first northern harrier of the season, skimming slow over the treetops, then a higher elevation osprey flapping in the other direction.
I parked on Atlantic Boulevard and stuck my head into the pond where, last December, Judy Blume had told me there were some roseate spoonbills. There were none, but I added a trio of blue-winged teals, sleeping with their heads tucked under their wings, to the list, and a proper great blue heron.
I was trying to be efficient, but the nature trail was right there, so I walked down to the platform, where I found nothing new. But I was halfway to the beach, so I headed out, and picked up a Whitman’s Sampler of shorebirds — a willet, a ruddy turnstone, a short-billed dowitcher and two least sandpipers. And through wind-buffeted binoculars, a double-crested cormorant on a distant channel marker.
On the way back I heard the chip of a northern waterthrush and the hyper-fast scatting of a white-eyed vireo. I was aiming to see, not hear, 59 birds, but I added them to the list just to be safe. I actually laid eyes on an overbird strutting on the path ahead.
As I was unlocking the car I heard a red-bellied woodpecker and looked up to see one creeping up the top of a snag. In the top of a different tree were two eastern kingbirds, migrants who would not be here next week.
As I turned onto Bertha Street from Atlantic Avenue, a magnificent frigatebird, all black so an adult male, sidled by in the wind. At the foot of South Roosevelt the three concrete abutments, which I always think of as the Three Sisters, were empty. Out over the ocean, things were getting dark. There was one particular cloud from which thick curtains of rain hung, but it looked like it would be a while before it hit.
I stopped where the sand ran out on Smathers and scanned the sargassum, but it was bird-free. Then I drove out where Houseboat Row used to be to look for reddish egrets, but there were none.
I figured I had time to get to Fort Zachary Taylor. The wind turbines by the Hampton Inn were spinning like blender blades on high, but a guy in a bucket truck was chopping coconuts off a palm tree, and if he wasn’t worried, what was there to worry about? It was just coming up on noon.
A quarter-mile later, the world was a white-out, water coming down in sheets. Past East Martello I turned onto the Bridle Path, partly because it seemed safer, partly because I was hoping to glance sideways into one of the salt ponds and catch sight of a reddish egret there. But it was literally a wash. I hoped the guy in the bucket truck got down okay.
Thunder started booming and I started worrying about the dog, who is not a fan of window- rattling noises. I drove side streets home, in the last stretch carefully passing a mother and her toddler son, him holding onto her hand, both of them soaking wet, both of them smiling.
In a little under an hour I’d seen 41 species. I’m pretty sure I would have made it to 59 if the rain hadn’t come in like that.
There are much worse ways to spend an hour.
