Tropical Audubon Society

South Florida’s Voice of Conservation

This morning, I drove down to Ft Zachary Taylor State Park in Key West to see the Cuban Vireo. My first views of the bird was fleeting, but by morning's end, I, along with a number of others, obtained crippling looks as it dined on fresh caterpillar near the top of a Gumbo Limbo. I made a couple of stops on my way back to Miami, including Boca Chica Beach, adjacent to Key West Naval Air Station. Neotropic Cormorant has been found at Boca Chica on several occasions (the first accepted record for Florida was from this beach). Today, I found one perched on a plastic pipe just off the beach, near a pier that is a couple hundred yards east of the barrier at the end of the road. A link to a photo of the bird is below. Directions to this location are posted on the Rare Bird Update.