RONNIE BLAIR
| The Tampa Tribune
Published: December 29, 2010
Updated: 03:32 pm
NEW PORT RICHEY – The glossy ibises stood in the shadows of a cypress dome for the longest time Tuesday morning, but the four hopeful bird watchers waited them out.
The birders suspected one of those ibises was no glossy at all.
A white-faced ibis, almost identical to the glossy ibis except for eye color, had been hanging out in the Trinity area at least since October.
The white-faced ibis isn’t often found east of Louisiana and one had never been included in the West Pasco Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count.
Erik Haney, Dave Goodwin, Ray Webb and Dotty Robbins set out on the chilly morning to change that. It didn’t matter that the bird had been seen on previous days. To be included in the count, it had to make an appearance Tuesday.
So the bird watchers waited for the ibises to move into a brighter area where their eyes would be visible. They waited some more. And some more.
“Finally, they came out in the sunlight,” Haney said.
Amid all those brown-eyed birds was one set of red eyes.
That was it, the white-faced ibis.
It was one of the highlights of the day for the bird count, as more than 30 bird watchers scoured woods, neighborhoods and the shoreline to tally all the birds they could spot within a circle 15 miles in diameter.
Overnight temperatures dropped below freezing and were in the high 20s when many of the bird watchers started counting about 6 a.m. That proved inconsequential in terms of the number of species roaming about, said Bill Pranty, a Bayonet Point resident who authored “A Birder’s Guide to Florida.”
“It was more of an issue for us than the birds,” Pranty said.
Around mid-day the birders gathered at Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park to compare notes before resuming the count in the afternoon.
By then they had spied nearly 160 species, such as the American kestrel, the pied-billed grebe, the snowy egret, the yellow-bellied sapsucker and the swamp sparrow.
Cindy Fargo, an Audubon Society board member, oversaw the tally sheet that listed bird species seen on previous counts. As they reported in, the birders checked off species they had seen. Newly penciled in on the bottom of the list was white-faced ibis.
Fargo and her mother, Jean Cifelli, did some birding in their New Port Richey neighborhood in the morning before heading to the park to take care of her mid-day check-in duties.
“We’re rookies, my mom and I,” Fargo said. “We just wanted to join (Audubon) to learn to identify birds in our pond.”
Curiosity about bird species also led Joe Colontonio to become involved in the Audubon Society two years ago. He said he wanted to be able to identify birds when he takes walks.
Now he often carries a camera to snap photographs that he compares later to the images in his bird guide.
“It helps me verify what I see,” Colontonio said.
Birding opportunities can come at unexpected moments, even during the Christmas Bird Count.
Mike Kell, vice president of the West Pasco Audubon Society, stopped by his house in Greenbrook Estates about noon, planning to grab a quick lunch before hustling over to Starkey Park.
Behind his home, next to a retention pond, he spotted an American bittern.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen it in that location,” he said.
He brought back video of the moment.
Nationally, this year marks the 111th Christmas Bird Count, but the West Pasco chapter of the Audubon Society didn’t start participating until the 1970s.
The event is called the Christmas Bird Count, but it doesn’t have to happen on Christmas Day. Each Audubon chapter chooses its day, with the only requirement being that it falls between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5.
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