Short-tailed Hawk at the Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden. Photo by Janet Loveland.
The Florida Keys Audubon Society held our annual Key West Christmas Bird count on January 4. Turns out it was our 15th CBC since we revived it back in 2005. We had 18 participants along, plus a reporter and photographer, who are supposed to be putting something together for the National Audubon website.
It was generally a day of the Usual Subjects, species-wise, but our usual suspects are pretty great. Some highlights for the day were a good number of Magnificent Frigatebirds (133) and a really low fly-by from a Short-tailed Hawk at the Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden. It was a bit windy, so the numbers were down from previous years, but all in all we counted 3,429 individual birds from 77 different species. They’re listed below.
Muscovy Duck 50
American Wigeon 1
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in the Key West Cemetery.. Photo by Mark Hedden.
Blue-winged Teal 40
Northern Shoveler 10
Red Junglefowl 60
Pied-billed Grebe 5
Magnificent Frigatebird 133
Double-crested Cormorant 21
Anhinga 5
American White Pelican 2
Brown Pelican 349
Great Blue Heron (Blue form) 4
A Great White Heron at Indigenous Park. Photo by Mark Hedden.
Great Blue Heron (White form) 4
Great Egret 14
Snowy Egret 6
Little Blue Heron 3
Tricolored Heron 15
Cattle Egret 1
Green Heron 2
Yellow-crowned Night Heron 2
White Ibis 188
Turkey Vulture 83
Osprey 11
A Lesser Black-backed Gull. Photo by Mark Hedden.
Broad-winged Hawk 2
Short-tailed Hawk 4
Common Gallinule 19
American Coot 27
Black-bellied Plover 4
Semipalmated Plover 150
Killdeer 21
Spotted Sandpiper 6
Sanderling 47
Least Sandpiper 62
Western Sandpiper 14
Short-billed Dowitcher 3
Laughing Gull 1138
Ring-billed Gull 29
Herring Gull 2
Lesser Black-backed Gull 1
Royal Tern 236
Sandwich Tern 33
Black Skimmer 30
Rock Pigeon 191
White-crowned Pigeon 6
Eurasian Collared-Dove 47
Common Ground-Dove 5
White-winged Dove 8
Mourning Dove 73
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 4
Belted Kingfisher 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker 1
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 3
American Kestrel 9
Peregrine Falcon 1
Gray Kingbird 1
White-eyed Vireo 2
Fish Crow 4
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 15
Gray Catbird 17
Northern Mockingbird 31
European Starling 20
Northern Waterthrush 12
Black-and-white Warbler 2
Common Yellowthroat 3
American Redstart 3
Northern Parula 9
Palm Warbler 81
Yellow-rumped Warbler 2
Yellow-throated Warbler 1
Prairie Warbler 7
Black-throated Green 1
Savannah Sparrow 3
Northern Cardinal 3
Red-winged Blackbird 6
Boat-tailed Grackle 13
Brown-headed Cowbird 7
