This morning I drove straight to Fort Desoto, another world-famous birding site on the west coast of Florida.  Last year I got many of my best photos here, though other birders had informed me that the activity levels had been unusually low for that site.  As with all the other sites I’ve visited in Florida, there seems to be quite a bit of variation in bird numbers at this location.  Nevertheless, I was excited to finally be returning to this legendary birding site.


As I was getting out of my car, two photographers with big lenses came back to their vehicles, packed up, and drove away.  Not a good sign.  When I got out to the beach, I saw that the tide was already quite high and was still rising.  There were almost no birds in sight—just one tricolored heron and a bunch of white ibises.  I walked quite a ways down the beach, but saw no birds.  Part of the beach is now roped off for the nesting birds.  I don’t remember that from last year.  The inaccessible part of the beach was, if I remember correctly, where I shot terns on my belly last year.  There wasn’t a tern in sight.  I checked my tide chart and saw that the tide would be maximal at 12 noon, would be rapidly retreating in mid-afternoon, and would be minimal at 6pm.  I bided my time by following a tricolored heron around for several hours.


When the heron eventually retreated into thick vegetation I did some more walking and found a large flock of birds on an inaccessible sand bar—royal terns, pelicans, laughing gulls, marbled godwits, willets, and two pairs of oystercatchers.  I tried to wade out to the sand bar, but could only get about halfway there before the water started to get deep.  I spent some time trying to get flight shots of the few birds that would leave the sand bar to dive in the water near me, but the direction of wind and the position of the sun conspired against me.


In mid-afternoon when the tide was halfway between high and low tide, things started to get really good.  I got on my belly in the mud (on a tarp) with the sun to my back, and lots of small waders showed up and let me shoot them at close range (see the marbled godwit above, and the thumbnails at the bottom of this page).


Some terns then came over and bathed in the shallow water right in front of me.  Other birds that foraged right in front of me included black-bellied plovers, sanderlings, marbled godwits, willets, laughing gulls, and various plovers.  Some birds foraged so close my camera couldn’t focus with the 600mm lens.  In late afternoon the activity died down substantially.  I then noticed that the tern flock had relocated from the inaccessible sand bar to an accessible beach, and I quickly positioned myself downwind from them to get some flight shots. 



The wind from the west was blowing ferociously, and after an hour or so I was freezing.  I noticed that all of the beachgoers had left too, due to the wind.  Eventually something scared away the terns and I decided to go back to my car to warm up.  By then it was approaching sunset, so I drove out of the park slowly, stopping at several beach access points along the way.  At one of these I got out of my car and shot a pair of willets foraging on the east side of the island near the causeway/bridge.  All-in-all, the numbers of birds were highly unimpressive, given the reputation of this site, though once the tide started to pull out the activity level picked up very nicely.  At least I always had at least one bird to shoot at all times (and during much of the time it was literally just one bird).