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I
woke up shortly after sunrise and was easily shown a Muscovy while
walking a block to a tree that held my year Spot-breasted Oriole.
After spending some time packing up the car we hit the Ft. Lauderdale
Airport in hopes of anis. The park off Griffin held no anis in a
very good search. We tried the cell phone waiting area, where I
parked and waited as Ethan and Phil searched without success.
They could have easily been perched on the fence line east of the train
tracks, but a train kept us from scanning that. After we
concluded that the anis were not going to cooperate we headed towards
Alex Harper's house. After picking up Alex we went to Kendall to
pick up my 4th straight exotic year bird. It only took 10 minutes
to find 2 Bulbuls on the northern most road in the eastern section of
the neighborhood across from the hospital. Alex
fell asleep, or at least his mind did as he guided me to wrong turn
after wrong turn to the Kendall Tamiami Airport. Eastern
Meadowlark was an easy year tick, but Burrowing Owls eluded us here
just like they would later in the day at the Homestead Airport.
Cutler Wetlands was a little more familiar to Alex, so we easily made
it there to find a few dowitchers, yellowlegs, and teal.
 Birding Cutler Wetlands
On the way there Alex did pick out a Short-tailed Hawk flying over the
road. Impressive at first, but after the first 10 or so finding
Short-tails was just getting too easy. We checked a few small
flocks of gulls for Franklin's without success. The only other
spot left to check for this tough year bird was Black Point Park.
The half mile hike got a little boring, until we ran into some gulls at
the end. The first five or so scans revealed nothing other than
the usual three and one Lesser Black-backed way out in the water.
Several more scans and a few jokes with a Laughing Gull skull later I
was able to pick out a little Franklin's Gull in the flock. I was
happy with this year bird, and we found a few warblers on the trip back
to the car.
 The Laughing Gull head that gave us about 10 minutes of entertainment
I think we hit Denny's after this where we picked a table where
we could watch the mynas and watch another Short-tailed Hawk fly
over. Homestead didn't hold much, except for some white bird with
black shoulders kiting in a field near 312th Street and 217th
Ave. We concluded that it was a White-tailed Kite, and my
thoughts of swallows were proven wrong when a flock of about 20 Cave
Swallows flew over. The rest of the day was spent setting up the
tent and playing frisbee. While setting the tent up, I found out
that I had forgotten the poles at home. Instead of sleeping
outside with the bugs we decided to use our tripods to hold the tent
up, and hung a Hatian flag, which Alex had for no reason, around the
tent for good luck.
Who needs poles for a tent?
At night we found Barn, Burrowing and Screech Owls on Research Road,
Least Bittern in Taylor Slough, and Barred Owl near Pay-hay-okee.
We also saw a few snakes including a cottonmouth.
 Cottonmouth in the Everglades
 Phil and Alex getting Cottonmouth off the road
 Alex and me clapping for King Rail in the Everglades
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