Manatee Hammock Campground, Titusville, FL - Site #166
We didn't actually count 50,000 Coots, we surely saw a lot of them...and a lot of old coots driving the refuge loop road blocking traffic. More on that later.
Yesterday we drove from Gamble Rodgers to Manatee Hammock. It was a pretty uneventful drive. Finally, we had some sunny weather, but the chilly wind was still blowing stiffly out of the North. After a stop for groceries, we checked into the Manatee Hammock campground in mid-afternoon. It is a Brevard County park and I'd made the reservations back in September when we were planning this trip. It was supposed to be my longest day of cycling, about 70 miles. Even with the tailwind, it would have been quite the long haul...and not a very interesting one as much of it would have been on US 1, a four-lane high-speed road.
Back in September, I reserved site 166, a water and electrical site which, from the site map, seemed to be overlooking the water. It does so, but through a grove of trees. What I missed was that it is the tent area. Not much of a problem, but the site is smaller than we expected and we are hemmed in by tents. There seems to be a family reunion surrounding us, complete with many kids and dogs. The corner site next to us, 165, would have been a much better fit, but who knew?
This morning was sunny and the wind had finally dropped. It almost feels like Florida. We got an early start and drove over to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is one of the premier birding hotspots on the coast. In making plans, I hadn't allowed for it being a weekend, a long holiday weekend at that.
When we arrived at the visitor center the gate hadn't been opened yet and there was a line of cars waiting to get in. It opened a couple of minutes after we arrived and the stream started to flow. It turned out that there were both an Audubon bird club trip arriving for a 9am start and a 9am Saturday birding tour run by the refuge. A swarm of visitors arrived at once so it took a while to get started.
Once we picked up the requisite brochures and maps and added the refuge stamps to my book, we took a walk on the nature trail behind the visitor center. While it did border on marsh, the trail was pretty forested. We saw the usual Yellow-rumped Warblers, a few robins, grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds as well as a Hairy Woodpecker. Ellen got a flash of a brightly-colored bird at the visitor center feeder as we were checking in, but when we went back with binoculars it was not to be seen. Another birder we met on the trail said that there had been a Painted Bunting sighted in the area recently...probably what it was, but Ellen didn't count it in today's sightings.
After the the nature trail walk we drove over to the Black Point Wildlife Drive, an 8.5 mile loop road through extensive marshes and impounds in the refuge. It is only a small section of the refuge, but the most visited part. It is where all the smart waterfowl hang out, as much of the rest of the refuge is currently open for hunting. It is general duck, coot and goose season in Florida through the 25th.
After sighting of a Red-shouldered Hawk on a wire and a short stop along the way to look at a group of wading birds in a roadside canal, we turned onto the dirt road of the wildlife drive. It is a one-lane road and the old coots in front of us would just stop in the middle of the road and view from the car, causing the traffic to backup. Being a sunny Saturday, there was quite a bit of traffic. Being a bit more considerate, we waited until we found turnouts were we could park Speedy and get out to walk the edge of the impoundments looking at birds.
We saw a lot of smart coots. Every pond had rafts and rafts of them and every canal or roadside ditch teemed with American Coot, more than we could count. They were joined by dabbling ducks in most ponds, Northern Shovelers and Blue-winged Teal mostly, although we did spot a single American Widgeon. One large pond was full of smart Northern Pintails. They are a larger duck than teal or coots and desirable species to hunt.
Refuges actively control the depth of their impoundment ponds. Dabbling ducks will only congregate in places where they can feed off the bottom without diving, so most refuge ponds are only a couple of feet deep with the types of underwater vegetation that attracts ducks.
Coots, which are not ducks, will dive to feed, so they are found in places of all depths. We also saw Pied-billed Grebes among the coots and ducks. They are quite small diving birds. In a couple of ponds, which must have had slightly deeper water, we found Lesser Scaup and a couple of Ring-necked Ducks. The Ring-necked Duck behavior was quite interesting. We saw them among the pintails where they would swim up to a dabbling pintail and dive down right next to it to feed. Then they would surface when the pintail popped up, then swim off to another one that was feeding and do it over again. There were also White Pelicans in the deeper ponds.
Full size slide show
Some of the ponds and marsh areas were even shallower and attracted wading birds and shorebirds. There was only one really shallow pond with shorebirds on our drive, but the waders were found along most pond edges. We saw Great, Snowy and Reddish Egrets and Little Blue, Tri-colored Herons. There were also a few Roseate Spoonbills as well as White and Glossy Ibis. The real shallows had quite a selection of shorebirds: American Avocet, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Willets, Dowitchers, Black-bellied Plovers and Killdeer, with Ring-billed Gulls, Royal and Forsters Terns resting on the flats.
The skies provided the usual Turkey and Black Vultures, Comorants, an Anhinga and several Osprey, complete with fish in their talons. There were also a fair number of Belted Kingfishers zooming about. It was quite a drive, albeit very slow and crowded in parts.
After we left the drive we saw some of the highlights of the day while driving to and from a Manatee Overlook (There were no Manatee; the water is too cold this time of year). We saw a Florida Scrub Jay, a Bald Eagle and we ended the day with an American Kestrel on wire, a raptor, much like we started the day.
It was back to our hemmed-in campsite before sundown to find the tent area overflowing. Even at 9pm there are kids skateboarding by. Not our favorite kind of campground, but we saw a lot of good birds today. Hopefully, more tomorrow.
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