Birders who visit Florida's beaches during the autumn months enjoy a changing mix of shorebirds. By mid summer, permanent residents are joined by the first "autumn" migrants, arriving from their breeding grounds across the Arctic tundra and Northern Plains; various species continue to arrive through early November and shorebird diversity peaks during the winter months.
When we arrived on Longboat Key last week, permanent residents, including willets, piping plovers and ruddy turnstones, mingled with sanderlings, short-billed dowitchers and black-bellied plovers, down from the north. Early this week, flocks of red knots began to appear and, yesterday, a few dunlins foraged on the beach. Other species, such as long-billed dowitchers, semipalmated plovers and western sandpipers are surely in the area but have yet to cross my path; still others, including spotted and least sandpipers, whimbrels, marbled godwits, yellowlegs and American avocets prefer tidal mudflats and wetlands and are not generally observed on the beach.
The mixed shorebird flocks will begin to thin out in April as the earliest spring migrants depart for the north. By late May, only permanent residents and non-breeding juveniles (which may remain on their wintering grounds until sexually mature) are found on the beaches of the Sunshine State.
