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Yellow-billed cuckoo in my yard - Boca Raton
Posted by Justin Miller
about 4 years ago
4 Comments
This past Saturday, while out in my swimming pool doing some quarantine backyard bird watching - I always keep my camera at poolside in case an interesting shot comes up. It's usually just blue jays, doves, cardinals, grackles, and squirrels - but rarely there's something more interesting. Well, a surprise visitor to my yard was this yellow-billed cuckoo - only the second one I've ever photographed in Florida.
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Congrats on a great yard bird. I've only ever seen one in my yard, and that was years ago.
Thanks Toe. My only other spotting of this bird was in 2016 at Green Cay Wetlands. It was quite the pleasant surprise.
This Saturday was also pretty strong in the back and front yard - Cape May, black-throated blue, blackpoll, and prairie warblers, plus a few dozen cedar waxwings.
I normally don't see more than one or two at a time, but the exception was on October 17, 2011. A stalled rain front to our south resulted in a massive influx of south-bound migrants in South Florida of epic proportions. I went to Bill Baggs State Park and had many species, including 20 species of warblers and a huge number of Yellow-billed Cuckoos. I stopped counting them when I hit 150! But I heard that at the same time, folks out in the Dry Tortugas were seeing as many as 400 in one tree! Unbelievable numbers. Once it a lifetime.
That would have been stunning indeed! I've never witnessed a true fallout, but I've had a few occasions where the numbers were much higher than normal. Even Saturday was a bit unusual with the Cape May warblers - had to be at least 20 of them in my yard...I usually only see a handful.
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