I’m excited. For the first time since I started doing the Palm Beach County Christmas Bird Count, I’ll be working a new territory—and it has the potential to be a good’un! Instead of the completely urbanized southern boundary of the count circle (Lake Ida and environs in Delray Beach), I’ll be out west near the refuge, walking a fairly productive (from time to time) set of power lines. The power lines are spaced 1/8-mile apart, and there are 9 of them on the route (the path dead-ends into a canal that separates us from the 9th line, but it’s within shouting distance): 1 mile from end to end.
The right-of-way is overgrown, but not too badly (FPL needs truck access to service the lines, in the event), so it makes for easy walking along farm and canal edges. In other words, excellent habitat for wintering warblers and other species. On this morning’s scouting trip, we encountered the usual suspects: wrens (Carolina, House), warblers (Common Yellowthroat, Orange-crowned, Pine), Gray Catbirds (galore), Blue Jays (in spades), Northern Cardinals, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Killdeer, egrets, raptors, etc. But we also found a couple of Good Birds: Swamp Sparrow (not a rarity, but not a given, either) and Wilson’s Warbler! That’s right, Wilson’s Warbler, my first in Florida. A beautiful male bird who looked somewhat like this (image from Wikipedia):
Yay! There’s no guarantee, of course, that he’ll still be around on Sunday, but at least we’ll have him for count week! And I’ve got my fingers crossed for the weekend.