Late April is a wonderful time to visit South Florida. Migrants augment the resident birds, and all of South Florida’s special breeding birds have arrived. We’ll visit the most interesting habitats on the southern end of the peninsula including upland pine forests, the stunning Florida Keys, the Big Cypress Preserve, shallow sandy lagoons of the southwest coast, and the Everglades National Park.
The Keys are at their best at this time of year, and we’ll explore areas known to us looking for the sought-after southern Florida specialties such as Mangrove Cuckoo, Black-whiskered Vireo and White-crowned Pigeon. We’ll also take a day trip by boat to the fabulous Dry Tortugas. Even though we’ll have just four and a half hours on Fort Jefferson, it’s enough time to appreciate the magnificent seabird colony and see most of the birds for which the area is justly famous. On good years the thickets and isolated trees around the fort can be filled with resting migratory birds, an excellent complement to the thousands of Sooty Terns and Brown Noddies wheeling overhead. We’ll conclude in the Miami area, where elements of a huge parrot fauna, and several other exotic species have become naturalized. Add in the chance of a vagrant from the Caribbean, and it’s easy to see why South Florida in late April is so appealing.