Guest Blogger: Captain Dave Hunt

Captain Dave isn't always this serious

Captian Dave Hunt is a professional fishing and bird guide.  He is a Coast Guard licensed Master Captain and Florida Master Naturalist.  He is also a new friend.  My wife and I had the pleasure of taking one of Dave's birding tours back in January.  If interested in a tour, visit Dave's Everglades Birding page.  Thank you Dave for contributing to my blog!

To anyone coming to Everglades National Park to bird, I would like to give some personal insight.  First of all, I get told a million times a year “I can’t wait to go to the Everglades to see birds.”  Many go to Everglades City to stay and see them. I want everyone to know that Everglades City is a little town on the edges of a mangrove estuary that has few birds.  Don’t waste your time folks. The second thing is that the Everglades is only 25% of the park.  You drive through it in 2 minutes after passing the Coe Center. The park consists of seven different habitats from everglades (wetlands) to cypress to mangroves and pinelands. Birding from the road on the edge of the Everglades is barely worth it.  Forget a hike through the Everglades. Ever try and walk through a wetland to bird with razor sharp sawgrass 5 feet high in muck? Airboat ride? The machine will scare every bird for miles.  Seeing your guide feed alligators bread for the highlight is also illegal. 

Now that you have entered the park there are birds and lots of them.  Follow the roads to places like Royal Palm and Paroutis Palm, and walk the numerous trails and go see birds like passerines, freshwater marsh birds and, yes, alligators.

December through April is the best time to bird in the ‘Glades’.  The bugs are low and the migrants are a plenty. The area at Flamingo where the 38 mile long Ingraham Highway ends is in the heart of the Atlantic flyway, but many of the park’s feathered visitors are from the Mississippi Flyway. This is where the shoreline meets Florida Bay, and what I call the Vatican of birding for peeps, shorebirds and wading birds. Marine mammals and crocodile’s also make a living here. This is extreme birding.  Florida Bay is over half a million acres in size, averages 3 feet in depth and consists of basins, channels and flats. Over six thousand five hundred years ago it was a freshwater marsh. This is where the birds can be seen feeding by the thousands as peregrine falcons, seagulls, terns, swallow tailed kites, bald eagles and ospreys fly overhead keeping watch for opportunities. I time my trips to the bay when the water is low, exposing the mudflats. Puddling of water in low spots on the flats and in small channels a few feet wide create feeding zones for these birds. Small worms, mollusks, crabs, shrimp and fish by the millions are on the menu. Some of the offshore islands have bird rookeries with tenants like nesting brown pelicans and spoonbills.  Sandbars can be filled with many varieties of terns and gulls. A half day trip can result in over 50 species of birds viewed, and can rank at the top of one’s life experiences.  Come on down to South Florida.  I’d love to show you around.