Mangrove Cuckoo—Not!

Monday, February 13, 2017

Ellen's cold is better but the mozzies are not. The wind has been from the land side, so our nights in Speedy haven't been as comfortable as they were when we first arrived.

Ellen and Sally went off on their own morning birdwalk rather than the ranger-led walk this morning. I went for another bike ride a little bit later.

My first stop was Eco Pond to see the variety of wading birds that Ellen had seen yesterday. They were all still there (or, more likely, they'd returned this morning). I passed Ellen and Sally further up the road as they birded the roadside and continued my ride to Mrazek Pond. While I was there (at Mrazek), the ranger-led walk arrived. Most of the birds I saw were there on my last visit with the exception of the Green Heron. The bird walk group were able to discern a Green-winged Teal. I've been trying to find the widgeon that is supposed to be there but without any luck.

I spent so much time at Mrazek Pond, that I decided not to continue on to West lake and just rode back to Speedy. The rest of the morning was hanging around, updating the Speedy Journal, then it was up to the visitor center for Internet access.

As we hung around camp, Harry and Sally went off in their van. They needed to charge their house batteries a bit and driving up to the ponds seemed a good way to accomplish the charging. When they got back, Sally was quite excited. She'd seen a Mangrove Cuckoo at West Lake. Sadly all we had for excitement was a four-inch-long black furry caterpillar.

The Mangrove Cuckoo is one of Ellen's target birds here in the Everglades. South Florida is one of the few places that it is found in the US. On our second trip here, Ellen, Sally and I went off with a birding friend, Alan Bragg, in search of one which was supposed to be on the Snake Bight Trail with no luck. Sally then saw it on a winter trip here the next year.

We figured we'd try to find the bird at West Lake. With a lot of peering into the mangroves and even playing the cuckoo's call (as Sally had done), we had no luck. I was only able to excite the resident crow, who landed beside me and would caw every time I played the cuckoo's call. We did, however, get out our spotting scope to get a closer look at the West Lake coots to try to pick out the red shields on their foreheads. It was pretty clear with the close-up view through the scope. I even found some that looked like they had no red shield, but I think that the red was just a small strip at the top where the bill met the feathers rather than the white-shielded variety.

It was back to camp for another dinner in the screen house. Between the screening and the Thermacell repelling devices, it was a bug-free evening.