Exploration

Probably went to bed too early last night as we were up well too early being still on UK time.

The plan of the day was to visit several of the main birding sites to get the lay of the land.

A pre-breakfast seawatch and mooch around the local area got us back into the swing of US birding.  Loads of black skimmers, laughing gulls and royal terns were roosting on the beach. The scrubby dunes produced the 1st warblers, a fine yellow and a palm and some pools behind help a small group of least and semi palmated sandpipers.
I managed resist a massive yank brekkie before heading off to the Hawk Watch platform.

I was quite surprised at how many people were there with bins. There were clearly a few birders twitching the whiskered tern but most didn't really have a clue. The pools infront of the platform held blue winged teal, lesser yellowlegs, great egret and pied billed grebe. Raptors were pretty slow with the weather not ideal but we did manage Coopers, sharp shinned and red tailed hawks,  bald eagle, American kestrel, black vulture, peregrine, merlin and tons of osprey. The trails were pretty quiet but we did manage 6 red eyed vireo, belted kingfisher and a female black duck.

Higbee Beach wasn't what I was expecting.  I didn't expect it to be so wooded and finding anything would be a challenge.  It was very quiet and a struggle to find anything but we did manage 2 northern waterthrush, yellow eyed vireo, ovenbird and a corking black and white warbler.

The raptor watchers are predicting some decent winds for the next couple of days so fingers crossed. ..