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Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival November 12 - 16, 2003 in Brevard County, Florida A celebration of birds and wildlife. |
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Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival November 12 - 16, 2003 in Brevard County, Florida A celebration of birds and wildlife. |
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Just as you once left your back yard in search of new birds and new discoveries, most birders are eventually inspired to take their avocation on the road to search for birds whose normal range does not overlap with their own. More than nine hundred species of birds have occurred in North American north of Mexico. In most states and provinces, less than half this number are accounted for as resident or regular transients. And while birds often turn up hundreds, even thousands, of miles outside their normal range of occurrence, pursuing birds in their native environment is more productive, and arguably more satisfying, than relying upon accident and chance.Travel ... Where?
The flippant answer is – almost anywhere. As a general rule, the farther you travel, the more unfamiliar the birds become. But you do not necessarily have to travel across the continent to see new birds. Habitat can be as important as distance where bird distribution is concerned. In some places where physiographic regions are found in close proximity, a trip to one hundred miles can dramatically change the birding landscape. For example, the distance between Rocky Mountain national Park and the Pawnee National Grasslands of Colorado is about one hundred miles. But the differences – in the nesting bird life and between western forest species like Hammond's Flycatcher, Western Tanager, and Lincoln's Sparrow and prairie specialties like Mountain Plover, Lark Bunting, and Chestnut-collared Longspur – are dramatic.
While many locations offer exciting birding possibilities, there are birding "hotspots" that offer easy access to large numbers of the endemic and specialty birds of a region. They have the advantage of being well known and well documented and are generally found in proximity to places that meet the needs of travelers.
No two lists of birding hotspots are identical, but every birder would agree that the following locations offer great birding. Some are famous for their endemics, some host large or unusual numbers of wintering species, and some attract vast numbers of migratory birds. One of my favorite spots is the Everglades in Southern Florida, a winter getaway that offers the opportunity to see many species that rarely occur outside Florida. Some species to see: Snail Kite, Shortailed hawk, White-crowned Pigeon, Mangrove Cuckoo, Black-whiskered Vireo. Period: December through February. Contact: Everglades National Park, Box 279, Homestead, FL 33030, 303/247-6211; also Florida Audubon Society. Also recommended: National Audubon's Corkscrew Swamp; Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. Reference Guide: A Birder's Guide to Florida by Bill Pranty (American Birding Association).
Cape May, New Jersey is an autumn migratory concentration point famous for its songbird fallouts, hawk migration (average: sixty thousand birds of prey per year), and one-million-bird seabird migration. Period: August through November. Contact: Cape May Bird Observatory, 600 Route 47 North, Cape May Courthouse, NJ 08210, 609/861-0700. Also recommended: Cape Charles, Virginia: Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, Kempton Pennsylvania. Reference Guide: The Birds of Cape May by David Sibley (Cape May Bird Observatory).
The Rio Grande Valley, Texas offers a verdant window into Mexico with a number of species found nowhere else in the United States. Key sites include Santa Anna National Wildlife Refuge and Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park. Some species to see: Muskovy, Hook-billed Kite, Ringed Kingfisher, Mexican Crow, Brown Jay and Tropical Parula. Contact: Santa Anna National Wildlife Refuge. Reference Guide: A Birder's Guide to the Rio Grand Valley of Texas by Mark Lockwood, James Patton, Barry Zimmer, and William McKinney (American Birding Association).
-----Excerpted from Pete Dunn on Bird Watching, The How-to, Where-to, and When-to of Birding (Houghton Mifflin).
