Pat's Wildways: Looking for Birds
This past Sunday, I was looking for a story — maybe about the birds of prey now nesting in our area. A pair of great horned owls and at least one chick are in their usual yearly nest in Fort Clinch State Park. If you go there you can’t miss the area. The normal parking area on the main road for the Lighthouse Overlook is roped off, and usually, a handful of photographers are encamped outside the ropes. A week ago I was driving slowly down the main road and a large bird flew under the canopy right toward my windshield, but luckily about 10 feet above my car. I stopped to tell the bird-watchers that “an owl-sized bird just flew over my head.” And the consensus is that if it was owl-sized, it was an owl. Confirmed! The owls may already be gone by the time you read this, so if you are interested, look there soon.
And then there is the 14th Street osprey nest. Bucko and I have been watching this spot on a tall pole near the back gate to Fort Clinch State Park for decades now. Some years the nest gets taken over by great horned owls first, before the ospreys move in. Some years the ospreys there successfully raise their young, and sometimes disaster hits and the pair is unsuccessful. This year it’s too soon to tell but one osprey has been seen in the area recently checking out the nest. Maybe more activity is yet to come. Here’s hoping.
And then there is the eagle nest on Crane Island to report about. For years now, even with all the building happening there, an eagle pair has occupied this nest, now right under new homes. Rumor has it that the webcam NE Florida Eagle Cam is focused on this pair, but last year I proved that theory wrong and wrote about it in a column about a year ago. No matter what, it’s an interesting site to visit if you want to eagle watch online.
But if you want to see an eagle nest in person, head to Crane Island Park and walk out on the boardwalk into the river. On your left you can see this nest in a high tree, but too far away to see much activity without binoculars. On my visit there Sunday without binoculars I couldn’t see any birds. Is this nest active this year? From a viewpoint at the end of the boardwalk I saw the nest in the distance, a house in the middle and at the far left a big bird up on a lone branch. It was too far to tell, but it must be an eagle, right? It was an “eagle-sized bird” at least.
So I got curious as I often do and decided to try to see the nest from below — at least as far as I could get before the no trespassing signs blocked me. I followed the path from the boardwalk until I could see the home in question. And sure enough, there in a gap between the trees I found the nest. And something moved in it! A brown eaglet!
So now, where was that big bird on a branch? I looked upward toward what I thought was the tree I had spotted from a distance. Nothing to be seen up there. But then in an instant an adult eagle flew into my view and landed on a branch partially obscured by vegetation. I found the eagle! The nest is active! Great!
But that wasn’t all the fun that walk. When I walked on the path through the undergrowth I was surrounded by chirping birds flying around me. The American robins have landed! This time of year in our area, robins are still in flocks eating berries before they travel further north and pair off to raise their young on bugs, worms and such. I immediately clicked on my Merlin Bird ID app (free for one and all in the Google and iPhone app stores) and started recording. Not only were robins around me but also cedar waxwings, cardinals, ruby-crowned kinglets, grackles, white-throated sparrows and red-winged blackbirds. If I were a true bird-watcher, I would have stayed there until I could visually locate them all. But I had more steps to walk. I headed past the parking lot in the other direction until I found my favorite bench to sit on. A tri-colored heron was feeding the pond beside me and a snowy egret and great egret were standing in the marsh grass across the pond. A perfect way to end my outing.
And all this took less than an hour at Crane Island. And yes, I got a story out of it! Mission accomplished!
Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D., is a zoologist on Amelia Island. She welcomes your nature questions and observations. patandbucko@yahoo.com
