Pat and Doris Leary are avid birdwatchers and citizen scientists from Fernandina Beach, FL, who volunteer their time and substantial skills to survey coastal waterbirds in Northeast Florida, coastal Georgia and Florida’s Big Bend. This is the fifth blog in which they share their experiences and sightings as well as the challenges these increasingly imperiled birds face.
Given this winter's weather, there were few opportunities to conduct gulf surveys under safe and favorable boating conditions. When light winds and full moon tides occurred in mid-February, we seized the opportunity to return to Cedar Key and conduct another series of surveys. Two productive days bracketed a blustery Saturday that suppressed the flood tide and kept us off the water.
On Friday, February 14th, we surveyed Cedar Key's west side where we found 664 American Oystercatchers (AMOY) dispersed across several roost sites and thousands of mixed shorebird species including 188 Marbled Godwits and five Piping Plovers.
Several pairs of resident AMOY were already occupying their nesting territories. Waterfowl were in abundance with large flocks of Buffleheads and Lesser Scaup rafted on the open gulf and solitary Common Loons noted in several areas. A visit to McLamory Key disclosed a recent visit by mink along the narrow sandy shore. This reclusive species is currently the subject of a FWC research project in our northeast Florida region.
Fortunately, we saw no disturbances from raptors and the large concentrations of shorebirds remained on their favored roost but in highly compact flocks. This behavior required us to stand on submerged portions of occupied shell rakes in the chill gulf waters to count the birds and scan for markers on the bird’s legs.
In Saturday’s predawn hours, yet another weather front passed through the region bringing a return of gusty NW winds. We returned to Cedar Key but immediately realized the brisk northerly winds were suppressing the flood tide and discouraging roosting behavior. As we entered town, we observed large numbers of Dunlin, Willet and Least Sandpiper foraging on the
expansive mud flats along the roadside that should have been flooded. We also noted several resident Osprey pairs occupying their conspicuous nest in the crowns of large pines adjoining the highway.
Due to the adverse conditions we aborted our survey and returned home along SR 347 that passes the Lower Suwannee Refuge office. We decided to stop and visit the refuge's large bat house and hike the river trail. The bat house adjoins the entrance road and is detectable by a rather pungent odor that discloses its occupation by hundreds of bats crowded between the narrow vertical partitions. Nearby is the access to the short river trail and long boardwalk passing through a flooded cypress swamp. Despite the mid-winter date, we found one small cypress tree beginning to leaf and tiny colorful wildflowers blooming near the trail exit.
Sunday morning dawned with much calmer conditions and we returned to Cedar Key to complete our surveys on the east side of the town. Launching early on the flood tide, we found large flocks of AMOY roosting on the maze of exposed oyster bars east of Live Oak Key, but few other species were evident at that tide stage. Before we could approach the resting oystercatchers, they began flushing and flying into the interior marshes to resume foraging as the flooding oysters became vulnerable to the birds' probing beaks. This circumstance required us to wait until the flooding waters compelled the shorebirds to abandon their foraging habitats and seek roost sites in the open gulf. At one point, we ventured into the shallow and hazardous marshes cautiously winding our way between the abundant bars. We collected a few band codes from foraging oystercatchers and noted numerous, smaller, shorebirds roosting precariously on the sharp-edged oysters that were rapidly disappearing beneath the rising tidewaters.
When we observed oystercatchers departing the marsh for the outer gulf, we quickly returned to a primary roost site to set up and await the arrival of more birds. Very soon afterward, flock after flock of oystercatchers arrived and we began recording numerous band codes. On other rakes in the distance we noted concentrations of other shorebirds and, once we collected all the banding data, we motored over to those sites to identify and count the species. On one submerged rake, we found a dense flock of 275 American Avocets and a few Ring-billed Gulls, but in all other locations, we found mixed flocks of densely-compacted shorebirds that made for problematic species counts. Well offshore, on Corrigan's outer reef, we noted periodic flushes of dense "clouds" of smaller shorebirds and when we approached the area, we noted thousands of Dunlin, Western Sandpiper, and Least Sandpiper amassed there.
Sunday's field work ended our gulf surveys for this trip. Horseshoe Beach in Dixie County and the barge canal spoils on the boundary with Citrus County will become our primary focus on future surveys as the season come to a close in March.
