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This Tourism Is for the Birds
 Watching for birds on Kings Bay in Citrus County |
As a senior executive with Royal Caribbean, Doug Santoni plots the movements and ports of its huge liners. Yet since he was a child, Santoni has been obsessed with the logistics of natural travelers who are much smaller and cover greater distances: Birds.
As a devoted birder, Santoni has raced down to the Keys before dawn to see a loggerhead kingbird and packs binoculars and a field guide on business trips. He keeps a long list just of the birds he’s seen in his own back yard, watches for the return of great kingbirds and marvels that the plover and sandpipers on Key Biscayne may have their second home in Alaska.
Florida’s birds hold the same fascination for lawyer Clay Henderson. His Holland & Knight office on the 30th floor of the SunTrust tower in Orlando gives him a perch at eye level with hawk migrations and can prompt a distracted “wow!” during phone calls when a peregrine falcon lands on his window ledge. At home in New Smyrna he watches a great blue heron arrive every Oct. 1, a punctuality disturbed only by hurricanes.
 Roseate spoonbills |
The first famous Florida birder, of course, was John James Audubon, followed by generations of conservationists and citizen naturalists. Today, Audubon has 40,000 Florida members. Henderson, who once headed Florida Audubon, likes to impress non-birders with the story of how he saw a horde of visitors with binoculars and cameras at Merritt Island all with their backs to the shuttle on the launch pad; they focused instead on a huge flock of ducks.
Both men travel widely for birding: Henderson spent his birthday at the Bay of Fundy off Canada, and Santoni has hit all 50 states. Yet they take pride that so many out-of-state and foreign birders come here to see purple gallinules, spot breasted orioles, roseate spoonbills and more.
The actual list of Florida species is far longer and highly varied because the state has so many habitats, ranging from the coastlines, shores and mangroves to huge inland lake chains, the Everglades and islands, and a long central ridge. Some birds nest and stay year-round. Some come for the winter. Others pass through, and some arrive after being blown off course. Internet bird boards pass along new sightings, like a pair of least grebes nesting in Boca Raton.
“I’m not sure Floridians know how special this place is,” Santoni says. Watching birds in the same place over time, Henderson says, is “a window on our environment and the dynamics of its changes.’’
Consequently, thousands of birders will fan out this month for the annual Christmas Bird Count. “I’ve done it for 20 years,” says Henderson, “and every year it gets a little harder to find as many species, but there are always surprises.”
For more articles this month with extra links, go to the Links page. |
