(Hurricane Charley brushed by the coast of Collier County on Friday, August 13, 2004)
In August, 1992, Hurricane Andrew blasted over the southern Florida peninsular considerably south of southern Southwest Florida; since then, including Charley, we have had seven tropical systems (three hurricanes, three tropical storms, and one tropical wave) pass through the area and we have been extremely lucky; none did more than give everyone a little more yard work (including Andrew). After each of these eight storms my wife Ginnie and I went out and surveyed the coast from Naples beach south to the 10,000 Islands to see how the coast and the birds made out. The following comments about Charley could be for any one of these events.
After walking Naples beach and Sand Dollar spit (Marco Island) and running 70 miles of coast and mangrove (Rookery Bay to Cape Romano) in a boat, there was so little evidence of a storm that it wasn't possible to take pictures that would have shown anything. Gulf waters were up a little and waves had washed over the sandbars and beaches, but from the looks of it, all this did was clean the sand some. Before Charley we had recently done several regular bird censuses for the whole area; now after Charley from what we could see and count, little has changed.
What we did find was that some of the old Osprey nests on navigational markers were blown off; but nesting finished two months ago and we encountered plenty of Ospreys after the storm. There were a few more Brown Pelicans north of Marco yesterday (8/17) than there were along the same route two weeks ago. It appears that several (3-5) late pelican nests were lost to wind at the Marco colony. On Sand Dollar there were plenty of adult Black Skimmers accompanying good numbers of flying skimmer chicks that obliviously were old enough to weather the storm. When we walked the sandbar the tide was low and the shorebirds spread out feeding so we didn't find a lot of Piping Plovers but did see 14, one of which was color banded (last year in Michigan). There were plenty of other shorebirds as there should have been. Both at Sand Dollar and south of Marco we encountered lots of Sandwich Terns resting on the sandbars away from the people out shelling (plenty of those too). About the only thing of note father down was six Whimbrels on a little oyster bar near Coon Key Pass. That was almost it.
Whenever the storms come up from the tropics, birders start checking the coast and that is because often riding the winds are birds that are unusual to the area. We have added several new species to the Collier County Checklist of birds, after such occurrences; Charley was no exception.
While checking the birds on the Caxambas sandbar we noted a different one that neither of us recognized. In a case such as this, the procedure is to work the boat closer and take pictures to document the sighting. Usually what happens is that the bird flies away. It was to shallow to get close so went a little ways past the bird and beached the boat. Then we walked back taking pictures, and it eventually was too close to focus the camera. The accompanying photo shows a juvenile Bridled Tern (Sterna anethetus) that most likely road the storm up from south of Cuba. This is a new addition to the county check list which now has 304 species.
A great way to spend a couple of days!
Ted Below, August 18, 2004