Gatorland is Home to Many Birds

By Betty McKeown

Sunday, June 2, around twenty Kissimmee Valley Audubon members gathered at Gatorland in Kissimmee to do a bird count. I decided to go along and help count and there were a lot of birds to count. Everywhere we looked there were birds sitting on their nests or perched in the trees. Mark, the grandson of the founder of Gatorland told us what was needed and then assigned locations for groups of 4-6 people to count in. I was counting with Larry Rosen, president of KVAS, and his wife Roz and a couple other people. Ours was the biggest area with numerous nesting birds.

Birds flew in and out constantly making it difficult to count, but the most exciting sighting were the two Roseate Spoonbills and their nest which contained three youngsters. Looked like two more RS were building a nest. The Cattle Egrets were the last to nest and some were still carrying nest materials. There were a few Great Blue Heron with young, lots of young Little Blue Herons in their white feathers, and some adults still on nests in their coats of blue. The Great Egrets were sitting on nests as were the Tricolored Herons. There were Double-crested Cormorants on nests, as well as, Anhingas. Our new young birder Sean was running around photographing the birds and was especially thrilled with the Roseate Spoonbills flying back and forth.

Below the nests the alligators waited patiently for something to fall. It was a beautiful day with a breeze blowing from the south warming the temperature up quickly. I left before the total was tallied, but it won't be the last time we count birds there. What a great close-up view we had.