[TN-Bird] need shorebird help (SWFL trip report)

From: Rikki Hall <sourpersimmon@xxxxxxxxx>
To: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 01:32:40 -0500
I got to spend the holidays in SW FL and saw around 80 species, including
several lifers (short-tailed hawk, limpkin, black rail). Winter plumages
made it hard to ID things, at least for me. For example, I saw at least two
types of tern over the open water of Rookery Bay, but the boat's vibrations
made binoculars useless. I'm fairly sure I saw a Forster's and a royal, but
I couldn't get a good enough look to rule out the other possibilities.

I saw a flock of brown pelicans actively feeding, and each bird had a gull
companion following it around, landing beside it, and squawking for dropped
fish or entrails. I think they were laughing gulls, but my inexperience
with winter plumage left me wondering whether the relatively few gulls
harassing the pelicans were a different species from the many laughing
gulls paying pelicans no never mind. The harassers didn't seem big enough
to be herring gulls.

Most notable sighting might be an eared grebe in the mangroves. Its winter
range is mostly west of the Mississippi, but surely a few wander into
Florida in a given year. That bird I got a good look at and knew what to
look for. Most entertaining sighting was watching a red-shouldered hawk
perch carrying prey, then figuring out that it was a large crayfish as it
got disassembled.

One sighting left me puzzled. On a barrier island there were several mixed
flocks of ruddy turnstone and sanderling hunting the shore and dune edge.
There were also three willets and some spotted sandpipers. At one point an
unfamiliar bird flew in, turned around and flew back from where it came,
gone. It had a white belly and mostly white underwings and a weak, white
stripe on the upper surface. It had a black mark behind its eye. What was
most distinctive was its flight. It was fast and did a lot of rocking back
and forth as it flew, not unlike a swift. My first pass through the field
guide left me thinking little stint, which Sibley notes has a distinct
darting motion. Upon revisiting the matter, I noticed that stints are tiny,
while the bird I saw was as big or bigger than the turnstones.

A small tern is possible, but the only one with similar wing markings is a
juvenile white-winged. I hadn't considered phalaropes on my first guess,
but I am now thinking red phalarope is the best diagnosis. When I flipped
to that page and saw its face marking, I got a flash of recognition. As
with the grebe, a red phalarope would be out of its winter range, but not
by much. So my question is, do red phalaropes have a recognizable flight
pattern similar to what I described?

Rikki Hall
Rockford, Blount Co
[TN-Bird] need shorebird help (SWFL trip report)

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