Shorebirder

Feb 5 - at sea, heading west After six different islands in six straight days we spent all of today cruising back west towards our final port-of-call before arrival back in Fort Lauderdale, most of it without any land in sight. We did some on-and-off seawatching throughout the day, not expecting much given our experience in these waters the week before when we were heading in the opposite direction. Even though we had few birds again, we were treated to some great quality. The day began the same way yesterday ended, with an adult RED-BILLED TROPICBIRD. Like the other two tropicbirds of the trip thus far, this one was also distant and not interested in the ship. Red-billed Tropicbird Things were quiet after breakfast until mid-morning when we had a brief flurry of activity. The following is copied from my eBird report: "While scanning off the port side of the 10th deck I spotted distant a high arcing seabird that was about to cross the bow from left to right. Runnin...

Feb 4 - St. Maarten Today was our sixth consecutive day of island birding, making those first two full days at sea seem like a distant memory. On St. Maarten, given what we had already seen elsewhere, we had just one major target here: Caribbean Coot. However, the validity of this species has been called into question for some time now, and further research may reveal it to be conspecific with our American Coot. Time will tell. Anyway, we spent most of our time on the French (North) half of the island because it is less developed, thus birdier, than the Dutch half. We hit several patches of habitat throughout the day, never lingering at any one site for very long. Most stops had water, either tidal or ponds. Highlights included our best looks at CARIBBEAN ELAENIAS and trip list-padding flocks of shorebirds and ducks. Some of the better shorbs and ducks were Whimbrel, "Western" Willet, Ruddy Turnstone, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, WHITE-CHEEKED PINTAIL, Ring-n...

Feb 3 - Martinique On Martinique we targeted two species, one endemic and one nearly so. The Martinique Oriole is a true endemic, while the highly endangered White-breasted Thrasher resides only here and on St. Lucia. We would devote the entire day to searching for these two birds but enjoyed several others along the way. The place to go for the thrasher is the Caravelle Peninsula on the northeast side of the island, where a preserve is located to protect the species. After not much searching we stumbled upon a foraging party of WHITE-BREASTED THRASHERS, which gave us all great looks as they scratched through the shadowy understory. Really great stuff. We watched as the birds approached us more and more closely. White-breasted Thrasher White-breasted Thrasher Further down the same trail we enjoyed a LESSER ANTILLEAN SALTATOR and a couple of "Golden" Yellow Warblers, which on this island are curiously red-headed like most "Mangrove" Yellow Warblers....