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Posted by Elsa on 01:53:10 12/30/07
Hello! I greatly enjoyed reading Toe's post so I thought I would tell you about our experiences. I can't tell you the whole list because I turned it in yesterday. Christian Point trail itself is pretty clear except for three places which could really benefit from log removal. We had the same lack of mosquitoes, thank goodness. The coastal prairie areas of Christian Point trail are still undergoing succession from saltgrass. In 2005's CBC it was all dead prairie from Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, which coated the area with mud from the storm surge. In 2006's CBC the area was saltgrass with still lots of dead areas. This year it was almost all green, but still mostly saltgrass; some resurgence of patches of prairie towards the end. When we saw it we did not expect to see the sharp-tailed sparrows, and we were right... but we were rewarded by large flocks of shorebirds at the end. Mike Manna saw a yellow-breasted chat (and yes, he filled out the documentation form) but sadly the rest of us did not. Bill Boeringer had the quote of the day as we sweated our way down the trail: "At the end of this, you would expect to throw a ring into a volcano." LOL! We didn't see a white-crowned pigeon either... but we did see a few bald eagles, a female painted bunting, a peregrine and a short-tailed hawk (dark morph). Of course, the latter two species were outside our assigned area - but they were still cool. The ospreys apparently either had tiny chicks that can't yet peek over the nest, or just eggs. Many thanks to Mike, Bill, Naomi Kibe, and Karie, for being on the team. SO: If you want to see the specialty sparrows in Flamingo, go to Toe's Amorphous Suggested Paths That May Not Exist at the Coastal Prairie Trail! Because you won't see them on the Christian Point Trail, not this winter, anyway. But I still like the Christian Point Trail's breezy end with all the shorebirds (and huge - though far away - flocks of American White Pelicans). How was it at Snake Bight?
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