NEXT APPEARANCE:
Saturday, March 27th, Virginia Festival of the Book, 2:00
I'll be sitting on a panel entitled Publish and Flourish: Networking through Readerville.com, along with my online chums M.J. Rose (Sheet Music), Roxana Robinson (Sweetwater), and Andrea Buchanan (Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It). Readervillean, writer, and radio commentator Janis Jaquith (Birdseed Cookies) will moderate. Visit www.vabook.org for more information.

So. Florida.

Big state, Florida. Or rather, a looooooong state, as I learned by driving from Key West to South Carolina in a single day. There's certainly a lot in it: astonishingly green Gulf waters, enormous reptiles, ridiculously pricey hotels and restaurants, spring baseball, dumbstruck tourists, and of course utterly fascinating birds.

My dad and I chose to go there for a couple of reasons: first, I had a two-week spring break that neither my wife nor my kids shared, so rather than hang out around the house the whole time, I chose to try some male bonding instead. Second, Florida has a number of bird species that do not occur in the rest of the United States, or in some cases the rest of the world. And third, yes, I admit it, I was really close to seeing my 300th life species, and I wanted to go over the top.

That statistical obsession is the kind of thing that will get you in trouble every time. Remember how it took Roger Clemens about three-quarters of a season to win his 300th game? I had the same kind of thing going in Florida. Before the trip, I had recorded 295 species on my life list--a number that, like 295 home runs, suggests years of solid professionalism, if not a Hall of Fame career. With the smorgasbord of new species available to me in Florida, however, I knew I had every chance to break 300, and because I had every chance, I also knew that the universe would find it highly ironic and amusing if I didn't.

At first, the universe seemed willing to let me do my stuff; I saw my first Florida lifer only hours after we drove across the state line from Georgia: a Swallow-Tailed Kite. I am not exaggerating when I say that I may have a new favorite bird. Yes, I'm enormously partial to woodpeckers, and Black Skimmers are just too cool for words, but the Kite was an absolute stunner: an elegant white raptor with long pointed black wings and an equally long forked black tail. And it's enormous--the wingspan can reach over 50 inches. I'd long hoped to see one, but I'd expected a smallish bird, perhaps crow-sized, that darted from tree to tree. This was something altogether different, though: a hawk of majesty and calm, gliding gracefully above the trees along the northbound lanes of I-75, unconcerned. Number 296.

The next day Dad & I drove from our hotel in Naples to Everglades City, where we met the good ship Manatee at the National Park Visitors Center and took a two-hour tour of the Indian Key area in the Ten Thousand Islands. We didn't see any manatees, alas, but the sky was clear, the temperature a perfect sixty-nine degrees, and the breeze brisk and invigorating. We saw egrets and herons and ibises aplenty, spotted some dolphins in our wake, and got close to several osprey nests to watch the parents feeding the chicks. And we also got a look at a rarity: the "Great White" Heron, once regarded as a separate species, now considered a color morph of the Great Blue Heron. Since it may well be a separate species when the next administration of "Splitters" takes over the American Ornithological Union, I logged it. Number 297.

The next day, I suggested a visit to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, one of the first tracts purchased by the Audubon Society for preservation. It's a stand of virgin cypress forest, and birds of all sorts live (and often nest) within it. One, the Limpkin, is a Florida-only wader that I was desperately hoping to see during the trip, and I knew this might be my best chance. We took to the boardwalk through the various stands of trees and grasses, and I saw many wondrous things from it: at least three of the peculiarly pale-feathered Red-Shouldered Hawks that inhabit south Florida, a sudden storm of warblers (including a Northern Parula, a Black-and-White, a Pine, and dozens of Palms), some achingly beautiful Black-Crowned Night Herons in full breeding plumage, but no Limpkin. I did, however, spot an improbable lifer: three feet from the boardwalk and eight inches off the ground, sleeping without a care in the world, was a Chuck-Will's-Widow. Its buff and rufous "camouflage" coloring did little good in the position it was in, and I cheerfully assigned it number 298.

Day Four involved a two-hour canoe trip from Everglades City up Half-Mile Creek. Mangroves were involved--lots of mangroves. And there was a capsizing incident which soaked my new Peterson guide in brackish water. I don't want to talk about it right now. From a birding standpoint, though, I'd call the day a bust. You can't see much in a mangrove swamp. Not even the Roseate Spoonbills which reportedly favor it above all other locales.

Day Five saw us packing up and heading down the Tamiami Trail toward Key West. We had a wonderful lunch in Key Largo with a family friend, and then we settled back in our seats for the drive down US 1. It's a drive everyone should make, if only to appreciate the fragile tendril of road that links the Keys to the rest of the world. In a hurricane evacuation, or just at a busy time of the year, there's not an alternative route. If you plan to drive, you drive on Highway 1. The Gulf waters, however, are a gorgeous shade, a turquoise that almost alarms the observer who's used to the darker and murkier colors of the Atlantic coast. And when you're driving along and see that above you is a Magnificent Frigatebird--huge, piratical, and dark, with scissors-like wings and tail, the scene is perfection itself. Number 299.

You can see how this will play out, can't you?

Despite keeping my eyes open for a day and a half in Key West, despite driving an hour back up US 1 to Bahia Honda State Park, despite sailing out for a sunset cruise west of the islands, I saw nothing. Not a single bird I hadn't seen before. Hell, Bahia Honda barely had any birds at all--a bunch of Laughing Gulls, a dozen Brown Pelicans, and a single Palm Warbler who apparently hadn't gotten the memo that it was Hide From PC Day. I saw a few oddities, at least--some Common Mynas near the naval base, and a few more Frigatebirds high above, but nothing new. And when we packed up and started our epic fourteen-hour drive to South Carolina the next day, I knew I was deeply unlikely to get Number 300 from the car seat. And I didn't.

But I got home, and took out my notes and my field guides and dutifully logged it all into the computer. I had a brief hope that I might get to 300 with the Common Myna; if the Mynas I'd seen in Hawaii in 1977 were Hill Mynas, I might be OK, but no such luck--my Hawaiian field guide reported that Oahu is home to the Common Myna. It wasn't a lifer.

But as I looked over my life list, I realized something: I had never put the Hawaiian birds on it.

There were only two birds I could be sure of, the Myna and the Red-Crested Cardinal (which I'd actually managed to photograph), but I had seen them both when Dad and Mom took us to Hawaii for the 1977 Rainbow Classic Basketball Tournament. And come to think of it, when they took us to England in 1982, I'd seen a Great Green Woodpecker, and I didn' t have that on the list either.

I was over 300. Even if I discounted the Great White Heron. Thanks to parents who love to travel and love to take their sons along, I was at 302 life species.

So thank you, Mom & Dad. And thank you, Universe, for teaching me once again that irony is a double-edged sword: sure, you can keep the richest bird habitat in America from yielding up a few species, but I can still beat you through incompetent bookkeeping.

On to 400!
9:05 AM

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