Magnificent Frigatebirds roosting in the Key West Wildlife Refuge

According to international birding guide, syndicated birding columnist, and Florida Keys Audubon vice-president Mark Hedden's February presentation, the seven birds you are unlikely to find in the U.S. outside the Florida Keys are as follows:

1) The Magnificent Frigatebird, whose only breeding ground in North America is Long Key in the Dry Tortugas.

2) The Great White Heron, which is the white morph of the Great Blue Heron--a coloration which exists on only in southernmost Florida and the Caribbean.

3) The White Crowned Pigeon. The Florida Keys boasts the only population of White Crowned Pigeons in North America.

4) The Short Tailed Hawk. These raptors come in white or dark morphs, and only about 500 exist in North America, all inhabiting Florida. They live in upper Florida in the summer, and migrate to the Keys in winter.

5) The Black-Whiskered Vireo, a neotropical migrant which breeds in South Florida.

6) The Antillean Nighthawk. In North America, this nightjar breeds only in the Lower Keys between Key West and Marathon.

7) The Mangrove Cuckoo, who subsists almost solely on caterpillars.   

How many of the Magnificent Seven have YOU spotted?

Says Dr. Ken Meyer, Director of the Avian Research and Conservation Institute (pictured above with a juvenile Bald Eagle): "Living in a place with as many rare species of bird as in the Keys is a special privilege which comes with special responsibilities." His December presentation to Florida Keys Audubon highlighted a few of our most rare bird species.

The Great White Heron constitutes  a "distinctive population type" to South Florida and the Caribbean. Each Great White lives within a very small range, feeding mostly in seagreass beds. The Great White Heron, along with the Reddish Egret, are the only birds whose populations never recovered from the many years they were slaughtered for their feathers to make hats.

The Reddish Egret's survival requires a very specific feeding site--namely hard-bottomed, shallow, tidal streams. Once a desirable location is found, the bird defends its territory vehemently.

The Magnificent Frigate does not breed until it is 8 to 10 years old. The only breeding colony in the United States is right here in the Dry Tortugas.

The White Crowned Pigeon needs two types of landscapes to survive:  mangroves for nesting, and hardwood hammock for feeding. Meyers stresses that for the White Crowned, no patch of land is two small. Researchers once observed a White Crowned Pigeon feeding from the same single tree in the cemetary for weeks straight.

Loss of habitat, whether due to human development or rising sea levels, constitutes a dire threat to each of these amazing, unique species. Meyer urges citizens to get involved in conservation issues. Write letters, call local politicians. For the White Crowned Pigeon, consider planting a blolly, black torch, strangler or short-leaf fig in your yard.  

 

Florida Keys Audubon hosted Rafael Galvez of Florida Keys Hawkwatch as November's guest speaker. 

Every day from September 15 to November 15, volunteers stationed on a high platform in Curry Hammock State Park are counting peregrine falcons (such as the bird in the above photo by Kevan Sunderland) merlins, kestrels, hawks, osprey, kites, and eagles. According to Galvez, Curry Hammock is an ideal location to watch raptor migration because birds reluctant to fly over open water are funnelled down through this narrow area in the Florida Keys, often riding the thermal winds generated over the land. 

With only five days left of the count, Hawkwatch has already counted over 18,000 raptors in 3 months--a record number! The Florida Keys Audubon Society is extremely proud to have been a sponsor of this year's Hawkwatch. Anyone interested in learning more about Hawkwatch and raptor migration in the Florida Keys should check the Hawkwatch blog: http://floridakeyshawkwatch.wordpress.com/ 

Florida Keys Audubon's first meeting of the season packed the Garden Club's viewing room. The star of the presentation? Four live Florida bats, and two people who love them.

Cyndi and George Marks of the Florida Bat Conservancy (www.floridabats.org) of Bay Pines, Florida have dedicated their lives to educating the public about these important, imperiled, and misunderstood animals. "Bats got mixed up in the Dracula story," explains Cyndi, "but they are truly gentle, shy creatures."

Over 1000 different species of bats exist, inhabiting every continent except Anarctica. The largest, known as "flying foxes," can have wings spans of up to 6 feet, while the smallest weigh less than a penny. Diets vary greatly from species to species. Some bats eat insects, while others consume fruit or nectar. There is a fish-eating bat and a frog-eating bat. The 3 species of "vampire bats" require 1 to 2 tablespoons of blood a night. 

Bats play important roles in their various ecosystems. The bug-eaters keep insect populations in check, while the fruit-eaters serve as seed dispersers. The nectar-eaters are pollinators, as the pollin gets on their fur while they eat. Bats are also the only mammal which can fly (others can glide.) Contrary to popular misconception, bats are not rodents. They belong in the unique order "Chiroptera." 

In the Florida Keys, our native bat species are bug-eaters, though we occassionally host fruit-eating species blown in from elsewhere. Each bat consumes up to 3,000 insects a night! Bats find prey using echolocation. Their voices are too high for human ears to register. "This is a good thing," says George Marks, "because bat calls are about as loud as a household fire detector going off."

Just how refined is a bat's sense of echolocation? According to George, they can tell how hard or soft an object is, its shape, and its size, even if the object is as thin as a strand of hair.

"The biggest threat to bats is human ignorance," says Cyndi. "Bats who roost in colonies are especially vulnerable. People who don't want bats in their house or barn often just seal them in to die, killing entire colonies, even though this is illegal in Florida." 

Once dimished, replenishing bat populations proves difficult, as most bats only have one "pup" per year. Breeding bats or raising babies in captivity usually fails, because bat mothers teach hunting by echolocation to their offspring. 

Above, Cyndi Marks displays a Florida bonneted bat, sometimes called a "mastiff bat." This is the biggest bat in Florida, as well as the most critically endangered. Only about 350 of these bats are left in the wild. Audience members were also introduced to the smallest bat species in Florida, called an evening bat, plus a Brazilian free tail bat. Cyndi also displayed a velvity free-tail, which is Key West's resident bat species. This particular bat was found near the high school with a permanently damaged wing. 

While the Markses were in town, Florida Keys Audubon, with the help of the City of Key West and the Key West Wildlife Center, hung two bathouses in Little Hamaca City Park. 

Most likely, the inhabitants will be velvity free-tail bats, also sometimes called Cuban house bats or pallas mastiff bats, as these are the bats most commonly found in Key West. We'll be sure to check back frequently to see who has moved in! 

broad-winged hawk, Little Hamaca Park

On Saturday, April 23, a team of birders was given 24 hours to spot as many bird species as possible. This year, the Keys are in the midst of the longest drought in eighty years, and the weather is exceedingly hot for this time of year. The Royal Poinciana trees are blooming early, their bright orange flowers carpeting the town. A small team of dedicated birders, Mark Whiteside, Carl Goodrich and Katherine Yang-Montgomery recorded a total of eighty-six species spotted on Key West and Stock Island, raising over $3,200 to support FKAS's wildlife preservation efforts. Thank you to all our Birdathon donors!

The following is a list of species spotted:


lesser yellowlegs             greater yellowlegs     belted kingfisher
magnificent frigate bird    anhinga          red-bellied woodpecker
great blue heron            willet                  great crested flycatcher
great white heron      potted sandpiper      gray kingbird    
great egret               ruddy turnstone       scissor-tailed flycatcher
snowy egret             semipalmated sandpiper  barn swallow
little blue heron           least sandpiper      gray catbird
tricolored heron          laughing gull          northern mockingbird
reddish egret              ring-billed gull        European starling
cattle egret                 herring gull            black-whiskered vireo
green-backed heron     royal tern              Tennessee warbler    
white ibis                    sandwich tern        northern parula
glossy ibis                   roseate tern           yellow warbler
blue-winged teal          least tern               magnolia warbler
hooded warbler            bridled tern           Cape May warbler
turkey vulture             sooty tern               black-throated warbler
osprey                         brown noddy        yellow-rumped warbler
northern harrier          black skimmer        yellow-throated warbler
broad-winged hawk        rock  dove           prairie warbler
merlin                    white-crowned pigeon    palm warbler
peregrine falcon     Eurasian collared dove   blackpoll warbler
common moorhen    mourning dove       black-and-white warbler
American coot    common ground dove   American redstart
black-necked stilt           ovenbird           common yellowthroat
worm-eating warbler   northern waterthrush  northern cardinal
northern rough-winged swallow     yellow-crowned night heron    indigo bunting                                    red-winged blackbird
common grackle                                 boat-tailed grackle

Eyes to the skies, Keys birders! Migration is here!

 
  Florida Keys Audubon met on April 6th at the gorgeous Key West Tropical Forest and Botanical Gardens. Some guests were treated to a guided bird walk with Dr. Mark Whiteside before the presentation, during which a rare white morph of the sharp-shinned hawk was spotted gliding on thermal winds, and a prothonotary warbler put on a show at one of the ponds.

   The main speaker was Mark Hedden of FKAS. Hedden conducts birding tours abroad through Caligo Ventures Tours and at home with Bone Island Bird Tours. He titled his presentation Key West: Truck Stop on the Migration Super Highway, explaining: 

   "In the coming weeks,hundreds of thousands of birds will be flying through the neighborhood, many of them stopping over in the Keys. The birds leave Cuba at sunset and have to fly the 90 miles between there and here without stopping lest they die; being able to find the right berries and bugs while they are here is crucial to their survival, as well as to their getting back to their breeding grounds so they can stake out some territory and find a mate. And this all goes on unnoticed by most people."

    Hedden revealed a fun way we can become clued into the rhythms of migration while getting an idea how many birds passed into the Keys on any given night. Check out a website called Badbirdz-Reloaded: http://badbirdz2.wordpress.com.

   On this site, birders track bird migration over Florida via Doppler radar. Once you get the hang of reading the data, you can follow the migratory birds' en masse movement the previous night. 

   Hedden explained how a famous study by Cornell University conducted on indigo buntings in a planetarium proved that some birds use the heavens to guide them, and that changes in length of night and day alter the biochemistry of birds' bodies as migration approaches.

   The Germans even have a word for the feeling caused by the instinct to migrate: that term is zugunrahe. Zugunrahe translates literally to "migratory restlessness" referring to the way caged birds will sit, flutter, or try to fly through their enclosure in the direction of their migration routes.

     The Florida Keys Audubon's March meeting filled the lecture hall of the beautiful Key West Garden Club. The topic: mangrove terrapin, and the speaker Dr. Roger Wood, who has studied these animals in the Key West National Wildlife Refuge for over 20 years.

   This adorable fellow is a mangrove terrapin--a rare sub-species of the diamondback terrapin (Malaclemmys terrapin.)

  

   And this adorable fellow is Dr. Roger Wood, Director of Research Professor of Zoology at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Director of Research at the Wetlands Institute and Program Director of the Coastal Conservation Research Program. He invented a terrapin-excluding device to reduce terrapin deaths from crab traps. His Terrapin Conservation program in New Jersey incubates and raises the eggs taken from diamondback terrapin killed by cars, eventually releasing the hatchlings into the wild. To learn more about Dr. Wood's work with terrapin, visit the Wetlands Institute Website:www.wetlandsinstitute.org

  The Keys' subspecies of diamondback terrapin are called mangrove terrapin. According to Dr. Wood, mangrove terrapin have the smallest range and population of all 7 subspecies of diamondback terrapin. Mangrove terrapin have the ability to tolerate water with extremely high salinity--though they are not marine turtles. And unlike their northern counterparts which hibernate in winter, mangrove terrapin sleep away the hottest summer months and are active during cooler winter temperatures.

    Since the 1980's Dr. Wood and his team have been marking and microchipping these carnivorous reptiles in the Key West Wildlife Refuge. Many of the first terrapin they marked are remarkably still alive --making them close to 40 years old!

   The popularity of turtle soup in the early 1900's saw intense harvesting of diamondback terrapin, which abated during prohibition because sherry was an important ingredient in the dish. However, terrapin populations still struggle to recover. More and more, human activities encroach upon terrapin nesting and feeding grounds. Dr. Wood's studies of terrapin--leading to effective conservation measures--are more important than ever.