Friday September 8th
Hurricane Irma is bearing down on Florida. This is totally up-ending life in
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| Foster's Tern |
paradise. Runs on gas and hurricane supplies. Even saw a long line of cars for folks trying to drop their pets off for boarding. Businesses are closed, storm shutters and plywood are decorating homes everywhere and residents are heading north out of the state by the thousands. So with all of this action going on, I went birding.
Spent two hours at Bunche Beach. Tried Six-mile Cypress Slough Preserve first but it was closed.
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| Black-bellied Plover |
The beach was empty of people, just a few strollers. Ran into Meg Rousher though. The tide was low, the water was calm and lots of birds were present. Started with a FOS Peregrine Falcon flying by. Lots of wading birds - Reddish Egrets, Roseate Spoonbills, Yellow-crowned Night-herons, White Ibis, Snowy and Greater Egrets, Tri-colored, little Blue and Great Blue Herons. Add to this Least, Forster's, Caspian and Sandwich Terns, Brown Pelicans, Cormorants, Laughing Gulls, Mottled Ducks, a Belted Kingbird, Piping, Semipalmated Wilson's and Black-bellied Plovers, Western, Spotted and Least Sandpipers, Willets, Short-billed Dowitchers Marbled Godwits and Sanderlings.
What will happen to them?
Gallery
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| A Banded Piping Plover |
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| Least Sandpiper |
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| Western Sandpiper |
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| A Young Least Tern |
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| This pair of Black-bellied Plover were inseparable |
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| Reddish Egret |
