You heard it here first! Or second! Or maybe fifth! Oh well. Anyway, the water level in Newnans Lake is falling, as it did in 1999-2000 and again in 2012. If it continues to do so, and the shorebirds take advantage of it as they did in 2000 – we had 30 shorebird species at the lake between January and September that year – then this could be a very interesting April and May. On the 1st Matt Bruce kayaked out Prairie Creek into the lake and paddled north toward the Windsor boat ramp. He ended up with 7 shorebird species: 340 Long-billed Dowitchers (by far the largest count of this species ever recorded in Alachua County), 105 Lesser Yellowlegs, 20 Greater Yellowlegs, 2 Solitary Sandpipers (the spring’s first), 3 Black-necked Stilts, 40 Least Sandpipers, and 1 Stilt Sandpiper. If the water level continues to drop, we should be able to walk east along the shoreline from Powers Park and south from the Windsor boat ramp and tally waders and shorebirds by the hundreds. It doesn’t get much more exciting for a birder in Alachua County than low water at Newnans Lake. Here are a few photos from May 2012 to give an idea of what it’s like:
Anyway, I’m telling you so you’ll be prepared. It could be good.
On the 31st Howard Adams spotted the spring’s first Short-tailed Hawk, a dark-morph bird flying over the Prairie Creek bridge on Hawthorne Road. Hard to believe that they used to be rare. The county’s first-ever was shot on February 27, 1926, and it was almost 70 years before the second one showed up. There were five reports throughout the 90s; contrast that with the single month of June 2015, when at least three individual birds were seen during The June Challenge.
Mike Manetz and Brad Hall found two Hairy Woodpeckers at Longleaf Flatwoods Reserve on the 2nd, along the Red Loop, “in the open patch of turkey oak just beyond the little blue camping ahead sign.”
Grace Kiltie welcomed a Nashville Warbler to her SW Gainesville birdbath on the 2nd.
Jennifer Donsky saw a Cliff Swallow at the Hague Dairy on the 1st.
Summer Tanagers took their sweet time getting here. The spring’s first was seen by Scott Robinson at Split Rock Park on the 1st, and two others were reported at different sites on the 2nd.
The spring’s first Prothonotary Warblers showed up on the 30th, one in John Hintermister’s yard north of Gainesville and one at Keith Collingswood’s place in Melrose.
The first Chimney Swifts of the year showed up at UF’s Dauer Hall chimneys on the 29th, as witnessed by Richard Stanton. Unless the first was a single bird seen by Pamela Graber at Dauer Hall on the 22nd. She reported it to eBird as a Vaux’s Swift, but didn’t explain how she made her ID. Prior to that, the Vaux’s had last been reported on the 9th.
Craig Parenteau saw the first Eastern Kingbird of the year on March 28th near his place on the western edge of Gainesville.
Darrell Hartman reported the season’s first Yellow-crowned Night-Heron at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on the 27th. Away from salt water, I see these reported most often from rivers, but we usually have one or two pairs that nest around Paynes Prairie.
JoAnne Russo saw a Roseate Spoonbill at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on the 15th, the earliest spring visitor I’ve ever heard of. Apparently it hasn’t been spotted since.
On February 5th, Geoff Parks saw a pair of American Kestrels at the Osprey nesting post across 8th Avenue from the Gainesville Police Department. I was doubtful that it meant anything; in Alachua County, breeding kestrels keep to wide open spaces like the pastureland along the upland ridge running from High Springs to Archer, and that’s been the case for decades. But last year on March 6th a Pennsylvania birder named Cynthia Lukyanenko, cooling her heels at the Gainesville airport (“At least flight delays allow for a little extra birding”), saw something that no one had reported inside the city limits since the 1950s or 60s: “There’s a pair nesting in the glass enclosure of one of the outdoor lights near gate 1. Visible from the passenger area of the terminal. One was sitting on the nest, and the other arrived shortly thereafter with what looked like a small lizard.” Karl Miller and I didn’t hear about it until mid-April – a month and a half after the report – and, not surprisingly, we saw no signs of nesting activity, though we did see one or more kestrels. The pair at the 8th Avenue pole, by contrast, have been under observation since Geoff’s original sighting. They’re occupying a nest cavity, and the female has been sitting in the cavity entrance being fed lizards by the male. Karl tells me that urban kestrels are common farther south, but this is the first for Alachua County. Or the second, if you count the pair at the airport.
You’ve probably seen your last Eastern Phoebe of the season. There, there.