All About the Birds

Pileated woodpecker DAVID KORTE / COURTESY PHOTO

Whether you’re a bird lover or a fledgling bird enthusiast, Audubon Florida is offering a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with some of the more than 500 species of birds that call Florida home.

It’s the 2024 Audubon Florida Birdathon, and you can sign up to be part of the action.

Just choose 24 hours period between Saturday, April 20, and Friday, April 26, get out your binoculars, head to your favorite park, beach, nature preserve or your own back yard and start counting.

“Birdathon is great. You can do it by yourself, or with others,” said Autumn Kioti of Audubon Everglades in Palm Beach County, a certified Florida Naturalist, artist and storyteller who leads nature walks. “It’s a great thing to do with family and kids.”

“I think in general birding is for everybody,” Kioti said. On birding walks, “people get a little intimidated,” thinking that they’re going out with a birding expert who knows all the birds, she said. “When I teach people I say, everyone starts somewhere,” she said. “Treat it like a scavenger hunt.”

Roseate spoonbill PETER BRANNON, AUDUBON PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS / COURTESY PHOTO

“The birdathon is a fun event designed to give the public a chance to go and see birds and help raise funds directly for places that protect birds,” said Keith Laakkonen, director of Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. “It’s all about the birds.”

Registration is free, but any money raised by this year’s birdathon will go to two supporting the maintenance of the boardwalk at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, 30 minutes northeast of Naples, and a new aviary for owls at the Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland, just north of Orlando.

Corkscrew Swamp, the 13,400-acre sanctuary, has the only remaining virgin bald cypress forest in the world and the largest nesting ground in the nation for the endangered wood stork.

“The boardwalk that winds 2.5 miles through this ancient forest is a great way to experience the sanctuary,” Laakkonen said.

LEFT: Black-and-white warbler. Right: Little blue heron

The birdathon is also happening during a peak migration for a lot of bird species in Florida.

Spring is the time when migratory species, many sporting brilliant breeding plumage, return to their nesting grounds. It is also the time when year-round resident species show off their brightest feathers.

Another birding mecca is the world-famous “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island.

Wendy Kindig, a past president of the “Ding Darling Wildlife Society-Friends of the Refuge,” has been an avid bird since about 2010. “I just enjoy getting out and observing nature and what they do,” she said. “I’m not a lister, not a chaser like other bird enthusiasts,” she said. “But I’m reasonably good at identifying them.”

The birdathon can get competitive, she said. One year her team, led by what she called a super birder, counted 130 species in 24 hours.

Erika Zambello, communications director of Audubon Florida, said the birdathon is a long-standing bird conservation organization tradition. “We run it as a celebration of birds,” she said. It’s not a scientific census, she said. You simply choose a 24-hour period and count as many species of birds as you can. Maybe you go out in the morning to a nature preserve, then go visit a park in the evening, or just sit in your backyard. “You can bird for 15 minutes or 10 hours, or the full 24. Whatever you want to do.”

ARNOLD COLLENS / COURTESY PHOTO

And you just might be embarking on your own avian journey from casual to committed birder.

This year, Corkscrew Sanctuary is focusing on seven “bonus” species that have been important to the park’s seven decade history of conservation: great egret, roseate spoonbill, wood stork, black-and-white warbler, white ibis, little blue heron and pileated woodpecker.

Laakkonen and other birders are looking at the radar every night in Key West to see what birds are coming off Cuba. The birds migrating en masse look like rain on the radar coming toward Florida, he said. “It’s amazing to see.” The wind forecast will determine where they end up.

“It’s like a treasure hunt,” he said. “You never know what you’ll find in a tree.”

The post All About the Birds first appeared on Palm Beach Florida Weekly .