Whoosh!

Saturday, Key West, John sat on the boat, I sat in my car, in the pouring rain. The tent leaked a little. The boat trip was cancelled about 4 PM, so we packed up the wet tent and took off up the Keys to Florida City.

John doesn't concede defeat easily. That night he booked flights from Houston to Key West and back and signed up for the next Dry Tortugas trip with Florida Nature Tours.

Sunday, we got up early and zoomed up to Key Biscayne, didn't get the Le Sagre's Flycatcher but got pics of Cape May and Black-Throated Blue Warblers. Then we zoomed up the 95, 50, and 75 to Crestview in the Florida Panhandle.

Monday, 4:30 AM, to Blackwater River State Forest. We had scouted this on the way to the Keys but arrived in the dark and had a bit of a 'tiff' time looking for the scouted spot. Where we did stop, I could hear the Red-Cockaded Woodpeckers in the dark. We finally saw them in the pre-dawn, they left, then they came back and posed for a few post dawn pics and ..... gone.

Zoom to Sabine Woods in TX, on the coast near Beaumont. No new warblers for us, but, Tropical Mockingbird, a pair of Chuck-Will's-Widows, Gray-Cheeked Thrush, Bobolink, and John's first Baltimore Oriole this year. Sunset, motel, laundry. Tuesday, we'll will pick up John's car from the Winnie Hotel and he'll drive to Houston to fly back to Key West and hopefully set sail Wednesday AM for the Dry Tortugas. Again, maybe.

I will spend a few days in Austin with grandchildren, then meet John back in Winnie Friday night.

John is up to 402.

Saps

Not that we saw any, but we saw the sappy evidence of many Red-Cockaded Woodpecker clusters in Blackwater River State Forest, Florida. When we talked to the specialist at the forest service headquarters, he explained that when rangers find a possible nest tree, they install at least 4 artificial nests close by to accommodate juveniles. The juveniles that adopt the extra holes will help the adults raise new chicks. All nest trees are marked with a white band. The woodpeckers mark each nest hole they use by pecking into the live bark and creating sap drips all around the holes. The sap may keep out some predators. The birds gather at dusk and dawn, but are easier to see at dawn. If we don't see them elsewhere, we will be back there at dawn after the Dry Tortugas.

But while we were cockaded-less at BRSTF, we did see 5 new birds: Eastern Towhee, Bachmann's Sparrow, Brown-Headed Nuthatch, Pine Warbler, and Red-Headed Woodpecker. John got photographs! Oh, and he did successfully photograph the Clapper Rail this morning on Dauphin Island.

John is up to 375.