Little Estero Lagoon 12/16

American Avocet

On Friday, Mike & I found Little Estero Lagoon in Fort Myers Beach. It was a tad difficult to find, since you have to park in a shopping center mall then cross the street and find the lagoon behind a bay side hotel. We were more interested at this point in finding new trip birds rather than year birds. Aside from parakeets and the Painted Bunting, we'd found just about everything we could reasonably expect as a year bird.

At first the lagoon looked pretty empty but a bit of scanning started to bring out birds and then a new trip bird (and state bird) flew in, an American Avocet, which very calmly fed at the edge of the lagoon only about a dozen feet from where we stood. We again found most of the egrets and herons you'd expect, though the Snowy Egret perched on a snag on the beach was extraordinarily blase about our presence. After Mike took a picture with his phone he suggested I do the same. I didn't think the bird would put up with another photo session, but it did.

We also had an American Oystercatcher on the beach, another new trip and state bird. Unfortunately, Shari was shelling on the beach at Sanibel while we were looking at her favorite bird.
23 species
Double-crested Cormorant  10
Brown Pelican  7
Great Egret  1
Snowy Egret  2
Little Blue Heron  1
Tricolored Heron  2
Reddish Egret  1
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron  1
White Ibis  3
Osprey  1
American Avocet  1
American Oystercatcher  1
Black-bellied Plover  2
Semipalmated Plover  1
Dunlin  1
Least Sandpiper  8
Willet (Western)  1
Laughing Gull  1
Royal Tern  1
Black Skimmer  20
Belted Kingfisher  1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  1
Palm Warbler  3