This past weekend I stewarded at Bunche Beach twice. On Friday Hannah, Jim, and I hit the low tide perfectly at 8am, and were rewarded with tons of diversity! We observed 23 species of birds!! We saw Piping Plovers this weekend, and with the help of some photographers were able to record one band. Thanks to Rick Kollmeyer! And you can see his beautiful photography of local birds at www.instagram.com/rickkollmeyer
On Saturday morning I attended the Audubon field trip to kayak with the manatees at Manatee Park, which was fun, and then stewarded after, so I missed the best of the low tide, but still managed to scrounge up 9 species in a short walk.
Has anyone witnessed ruddy turnstones or another shorebird flipping over sand dollars? We did not observe them in the act, but we saw many living sand dollars flipped over on their backs on top of the sand. Very Curious!
Here's the count from this weekend, in total:
23 species, but only 311 birds.
5 AWPE american white pelican
6 BBPL black bellied plovers
5 BRPE brown pelican
3 BLVU black vultures
34 DUNL dunlin
2 GBHE great blue heron (likely the same one, one 2 different days)
1 HERG herring gull
1 LAGU laughing gull
2 LBHE little blue heron
12 LESA least sandpiper
1 OSPR osprey
5 PIPL piping plover
3 RBGU ring billed gull
2 REEG reddish egret (likely the same one, one 2 different days)
4 ROYT royal tern
5 RUTU ruddy turnstone
47 SAND sanderlings
51 SBDO short billed dowitcher
13 SESA semipalmated sandpipers
1 SNEG snowy egret
113 WESA western sandpipers
7 WHIB white ibis
Here is a link to a doc of the four letter bird codes- https://www.birdpop.org/pages/birdSpeciesCodes.php
Robin Serne,
Audubon of Southwest Florida Lee Winter Shorebird Stewardship Coordinator LeeShorebirdSteward@gmail.com 919-649-7158