Florida Fort #2

Fort Jefferson is the largest brick masonry structure in the Americas. It sits 68 miles west of Key West in an island group known as The Dry Tortugas. "Tortuga" means turtle in Spanish. Ponce deLeon named the islands in 1513 after catching over 100 sea turtles there. Sad to hear about today but turtles were a great source of meat for sailors in those days. The fort is massive and was constructed to protect the shipping lanes in the Gulf of Mexico after the War of 1812. Today, it is part of Dry Tortugas National Park which is one of the most remote parks in the system.

I read a magazine article about birding on the Dry Tortugas many years ago and have dreamed about visiting ever since. This was the year. I invited several people but only Lori could make it this year. We planned to camp overnight but those plans were dashed when we learned that reservations needed to be made a year in advance. We opted for the day trip aboard the Yankee Freedom Ferry. The ferry leaves Key West daily at 8 AM. You arrive at Fort Jefferson by 10:30, spend 4 hours on the island birding, learning about the fort and/or snorkeling and arrive back in Key west by 5:30 PM. The ferry provides breakfast and lunch, snorkel gear and cash bar on the ride back all for $175. Not bad.

The Tortugas are known stopovers for migrating birds in spring as the birds island hop from South America across the Caribbean to get to North America. Remember, the birds migrate at night and refuel during the day which is great for birders.

Before we even arrived at the island, we saw hundreds of birds. The captain made sure to swing by "Hospital Key" so that we could see the only Masked Booby colony in the US.

Masked Boobies

Hard to believe that this sand spit once had an actual hospital on it. It was washed away many years ago. We also had our first look at the Brown Noddies and Sooty Terns that nest by the thousands here.

Brown Noddies and Sooty Terns

Lori and I were the first passengers off the boat. The fort is surrounded by a moat. Other people already arrived by private boat or seaplane.

Fort Jefferson

We plopped our gear on a picnic table and headed off to find birds which we did immediately.

Me and the Ruddy Turnstones

Lori and her little friends

These Ruddy Turnstones literally walked between our feet. They were so interested in eating that they were not afraid of the hundred or so people on the island. Lori loved it!

Once we were settled, we tried to optimize our time and headed inside the fort for birds. There are some trees and about 10 acres of open space that attract the birds.

Fort Jefferson

Most of the birds that we saw here will arrive in our area within the next few weeks on their way to breeding territories.

Acadian Flycatcher

Cape May Warbler

Dickcissel

Hooded Warbler - female

Others birds that we find at the Dry Tortugas are specialty birds that we will not see in our area or anywhere else for that matter - including the Boobies, Noddies and Terns mentioned already but also birds like this Antillean Nighthawk which only comes as far north as the Tortugas and Florida Keys.

Antillean Nighthawk

 Nighthawks are so confident in their camouflage that they just sit there really close to the path. This one opened his eye for a minute which produced this cool shot where you can see the reflection of the fort in his eye (click on the image to make it bigger).

Nighthawk reflections

Another special bird is Shiny Cowbird. They really are shiny.

Shiny Cowbird

 While the main attraction was birding, we did manage to spend some time exploring the fort. We found this Barracuda hanging out in the moat.

Barracuda in the Moat

Good thing we didn't see one when we went snorkeling. We saw some fish but the visibility wasn't great. The coolest part of the snorkeling was getting super close to the Noddies. They were perched on any old structure around the island like this ruined dock.

Brown Noddies - Coaling Dock

I actually snorkeled around the pilings of the dock. When I picked my head up out of the water and there they were just hanging out, not worried about me at all.

Brown Noddies

Lori made me go up to the top of the fort - 45 feet up spiral staircases with no handrail or lighting. I'm glad that we did it but I got down as fast as possible. Lori stayed up and took some spectacular photos showing the color of the water surrounding the islands. This shot shows the seaplane waiting to take passengers back to Key West.

Seaplane at Garden Key

We bid farewell for now but will definitely be back again. I managed to snap this photo of Brown Booby on the way out of the dock just for a bonus.

Brown Booby

More Southern California Birds

As I said in the last post - the point of the trip was to visit my uncle which we did. The bonus was to get the Boobies. But our other goal was to get Barbara up to speed on her Southern California bird list.  She hasn't birded this area before so she was itching to get as many new birds as possible - and she did.  She got over 20 new species even though it isn't the "birdiest" time of year out there.  Here are some of Barbara's new birds.

Other birds from the boat trip include this adult Heerman's Gull which was a target bird for me. I don't know how I missed this species on previous trips. I was so excited to see the first one that I took a photo of it waaaaaaay out in the harbor just so that I had something on record.  Little did I know that we would see hundreds of them during our trip.  This is the only gull that has gray body to go along with the wings.

Adult Heerman's Gull

Here is another Heerman's Gull.  Juveniles start out really dark gray, almost black which is pretty handsome.

Heerman's Gull

 Elegant terns were also present along the coast. These are pretty interesting looking with their black crest and long orange bill.  There were dozens of them resting on the beach.

Elegant Tern

 This one looks like he's about to start conducting the tern orchestra.  And a one, and a two. . .

Elegant Tern

Another bird that we saw from the boat was Black-vented Shearwater. Same deal as the gull - we saw one and ran around the boat deck to get a look at it and then saw about 200 more after that.  Unfortunately, these birds are difficult to photograph in evening light.  This is the best that I could muster.

Black-vented Shearwater

 This Brandt's Cormorant was hanging out with the Masked Booby (who was perched just above).

Brandt's Cormorant

The best part about these birds are the stunning blue eyes.  This is another bird that swam by us while we were on the jetty looking at the Blue-footed Boobies. Women pay money for contact lenses to get eyes like that.

Brandt's Cormorant

Speaking of the boat.  Here is a photo of Diane as she was video taping the hundreds of Dolphins that surrounded our boat.  What a spectacle.

Di

 This is the best photo I could get of one of the dolphins. 

Common Dolphin

I have one more post coming from the LA trip. Stay tuned.

LA Boobies

Di wanted me to title this "Wanna See Our Boobies?" but I think it would send the blog into the porn section!  You might remember a post from 2 years ago about a Brown Booby that showed up in Cape May and hung around on a buoy for a few weeks. (Don't worry, another one showed up this year and got counted for the stupid contest)  If not - here is the link to that post.  If so, you will also recall that Boobies are very rare in NJ. Well, they are very rare in California too.  However, 2 types of Boobies are here now - a Masked Booby which is from the tropics and Carribean is doing it's best impression of the Brown Booby by sitting on a buoy in the LA harbor and allowing the dolphin and whale watching boats to get really close.  Check this out. The bird is named after the mask that can be seen around the eyes and base of the bill.

Masked Booby

This guy even mugged for the camera by waving at the passengers on the boat!  Hi there.

Masked Booby waving at the boat

The funniest part of the Masked Booby sighting is that Barbara found coupons for the boat trip and got us booked for Sunday at 3 PM.  We showed up to the dock and stood in line with the normal type of people and families who would sign up for a dolphin/whale watching trip but could see that a few other passengers also had binoculars and cameras.  It turns out that I knew another guy on the boat! What are the chances that a NJ birder that I met in a field in the Pine Barrens was on the same boat?  Crazy right? We just kept shaking our heads and laughing.

The Gang

We also had a great captain - Captain Chris who expertly maneuvered that boat  around the buoy for great photo opps. He also took us out and found Black-vented Shearwaters which was another lifer for all of us.


There is another type of Booby here in LA too - at least 4 Blue-footed Boobies have been hanging around on a jetty and are easily seen from shore.  Photo opps were not as great since we couldn't get close.  Here are a few so-so shots. I hope you can see the blue feet in the photos.

Blue-footed Booby - middle bird with white breast

 Here is another Booby (left) scratching his neck with his big blue paddle foot.  The middle bird is also a Booby but his head is tucked under his wing.  The big bird is a Pelican.

Blue-footed Booby

More to follow. I gotta catch a flight to San Francisco.

End of the Season

Well, its looking more like the end of the summer considering that we had SNOW on Saturday and the Brown Booby finally left Wildwood yesterday.  Yes, SNOW and yes, the Brown Booby left.  The great thing about the snow is that it melted by the next day. 

The great thing about the Booby is that she really left - not just disappeared.  And not only did she leave on her own accord (I guess the channel marker got slippery with all of that snow and frost on it), but she flew past the tour boat that has been taking hundreds of people out to see her for the past few months on her way out of the sound and gave everyone one last view on her way to open ocean.  A fitting ending to a terrific few months.  Check out the post on NJBirds for more details about the departure written by Sam Galick. 

As a recap, here is my best photo of the bird taken from our whale watching trip in August and the link to my blog post from that day cleverly entitled "Now, About that Booby . . . "

Our Southern Friend for the Summer - Female Brown Booby

Now onto winter birds and hopefully a replacement rarity.  Maybe another Ivory Gull?  Who knows, but that is what keeps us interested until spring!

Now, About That Booby . . .

You didn't think that I would leave that last sentence hanging there without more about the Booby did you? Sam phoned me to tell me about the Brown Booby - a rare bird for the north - that was sighted sitting on a channel marker in Jarvis Sound. Then he called back to tell me that the bird was sitting on marker #475 - to be exact. I immediately asked our captain if we would be passing that marker and that a rare bird was sitting on it. The captain told me that he saw the bird on the morning trip and yes, we would be passing it.

Here is the calm, idyllic scene.

Jarvis Sound - typical Saturday in August

The Starlight boat, which is closest to the marker in the above photo, is the sister boat to the one we were on. I was standing on the top deck photographing the bird both on the way out and the way in. Eye level, up close views of the bird! And thanks to Captain Chris for slowing the boat down when we were next to the marker so that we all got great looks and some good photos. Enjoy.

Brown Booby on Channel Marker 475.

This is an adult bird told by the white belly, yellow beak and feet.

He sat there as if it were perfectly normal for him to be there. In fact, he was still there today (Tuesday). I hope he gets home soon although its been quite fun to write about boobies!