Godwits, Willets and Dowitchers

March 5, 2019

Yesterday evening Mel and I decided to drive a few miles down the road to Coffee Pot Park for a walk along the Coffee Pot bayou and then along Tampa Bay. Even though it wasn’t really going to be a ‘picture  walk’, I took my camera along anyway—just in case. 

Marbled Godwit
Short Billed Dowitcher
Semipalmated Plover

There were just tons of different birds along the waterfront — but if Mel hadn’t had his binoculars, and I hadn’t had my camera with the long lens, it would have been impossible for us to discriminate all the different shapes that were out there! Even with our assistive  devices in hand, we had no idea what many of the birds were.  I was eager to know what we were seeing, so I took an excessive number of pictures—hoping I could identify them later.

Black Skimmer

Even with my handy bird app and my giant bird book and Google, I still had trouble identifying some of them! There are just so many birds that look similar, and many birds that look entirely different when they are adults from when they are juveniles!

After many hours of sorting through my pictures and consulting with my resources, I’ve determined that we saw all of the following birds: brown pelicans, laughing gulls, sanderlings, dunlins, short billed dowitchers, black bellied plovers, black skimmers, great blue herons, reddish egret (maybe), roseate spoonbills, willets, marbled godwits and  semipalmated plovers. If I have misidentified any of these birds, I certainly welcome corrections!

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