Travel - Birthday Weekend Birdwatching - December 31, 2025

Circumstances altered late this year to give me a five day weekend over my birthday and even though I'm set to head off on another trip the week after, I couldn't help but squeeze one more trip in.  Plus, this is the year I've decided to actually celebrate my birthday.  This will be the first year as an adult (yes, at the age of 44), I don't try and avoid the day.  I've actually told people about the day this year!  So a day of birdwatching on the day sounded perfect and then I'll enjoy a happy hour with friends the week after.

So here I am starting this blog series on New Year's Eve as I eat potato chips and Cheerios and drink a bottle of chardonnay in my hotel room because the hotel restaurant isn't open tonight.  It's actually the perfect way to start the trip.

I started my day early this morning.  I left on my weekday alarm of 6:00 a.m. fully expecting to be up before then but wanting to have a backup.  I'm pretty sure I was actually pulling out of the parking garage by or before 6am.  It was a cold morning, in the 20s and my first "tank" of electricity really reflected that.  I was a bit horrified to see around 320 Wh/mi.  My car average is just under 250 Wh/mi (lower numbers are better) to give you a comparison.  But it all got so much better from there.  At one of the charging stops it was around 230 Wh/mi.

I ran into one charger that was limiting charging to 70 kW.  It was a 150 kW charger that I usually see 110+ kW when the battery percentage is low.  So I'm sure this stop took just a little longer than normal.

And then at my last stop, just a few miles from my hotel (which doesn't have overnight charging so I wanted to be ready to explore the next day), I actually waited for a charger.  This is the first time I've ever waited.  I was really impressed with how orderly the line was formed and how people paid attention to who was next.  

But it was a really good travel day even with those slow downs.  I had about 9 hours of pure driving time and I just went in with the mindset that I wasn't in a hurry.  And since the divorce, I'm finding a peace and sanctuary in my car that I had not expected.  For reasons I won't get into here, road trips were always stressful and now all that chaos is gone.  It's just me and the quiet.  

And I enjoyed the quiet for several of those hours and then I put on an audiobook I had checked out of the library using the Libby app.  It's the classic 1984 by George Orwell which is just fascinating to listen to given so much of what I have experienced in real life over the last few years.  What struck me most is all the discussion about rewriting history.  But anyways, this blog isn't really about the books I'm consuming.

So I got to the hotel a little before 6pm ET.  My app notified me that my room was ready about 5:15 so when I arrived, I was able to walk right past the line at the front desk and head straight to my room with my digital key.  I'm staying at the Hilton Garden Inn Tampa North.  It's about walking distance from Lettuce Lake Park one of my two targeted birdwatching areas in Tampa.  But first, tomorrow I'm headed to Fort De Soto Park on the south side of Tampa.  It has seven miles of beaches and is known for the Reddish Egrets that often dance as they fish in the water just off the beach.  We'll see what luck I have in finding shorebirds. Today's eBird sightings only had one reddish egret but lots of other birds I haven't seen before or don't see regularly, including a Roseate Spoonbill!  I always try to go in with no expectations so I can just enjoy whatever I encounter.

After two nights in the Tampa area, I'm headed to the Atlanta coast to spend some time at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

Fort De Soto Park - Birthday Weekend Birdwatching - January 1, 2026

Happy New Year!  I had hoped to have a hot breakfast at the hotel before starting the day but was told the wrong start time.  When I arrived at 6:00 a.m. and learned it wouldn't open for another hour, I couldn't conceive of wasting that hour waiting so I grabbed a cup of coffee and a muffin from the hotel shop and headed out.

There were these really low clouds, more formed than a general fog but as low as fog.  The very first rays of red and orange light were just starting to peak over the horizon making the clouds look like they were on fire.  And then all the clouds lifted and before me was the beautiful skyline of Tampa.  I kept looking for glimpses of the sunrise as I crossed bridges and headed south to Fort De Soto Park.  At one point, it was a huge red ball behind a suspension bridge creating a gorgeous silhouette surrounded by color.  There was no where to pull over to take any photos so my descriptions will have to suffice.

I arrived at the park sometime shortly after 7:30 a.m. and parked in the lot by the north beach.  From the moment I stepped out of my car, my ears were greeted to the loud chatter of a flock of birds.  I went to investigate and found a huge flock of Nanday Parakeets.  They are a non-native species originally from South America that was a big part of the bird cage pet trade.  Enough of them escaped captivity in the Tampa Bay area to create large feral colonies.  I remembered them from my last visit to this park.

I spent at least three hours walking the beach, focusing on the tidal ponds away from the surf.  The highlight was definitely the Reddish Egrets.  They put on quite a performance for me.  As I did my editing of photos, I organized them by species this time so this isn't necessarily the order I found them in.

This is where I watched the first Reddish Egret I came across.

It was cold.  My feet were frozen and I wore gloves half the time.  But the beach isn't the same without sandals.

Here are the Reddish Egrets:

Red-breasted Merganser (there was just a single Merganser hanging out in the pond)

Snowy Plovers - These are so tiny!  I didn't even see them at first until the sand appeared to be moving which made me look a little closer!

Brown Pelicans - A few were even fishing in the surf.  I love how little grace they have as they plop in the water.

I didn't move my camera fast enough to capture the splash right after this moment!

Palm Warblers - These cute little birds were everywhere!

Ring-billed Gull

Royal Tern

Herring Gull (Juvenile)

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Laughing Gull

Common Loon

Osprey

Tricolored Heron

Great Egret with a White Ibis family

Killdeer in the parking lot

After about 3 hours of walking and very little to eat for breakfast, I was getting really hungry.  On my way back to my hotel, I stopped off to top off my car and get a sub from Wawa.  I spent a quiet afternoon going through the 724 photos I had taken that day and then had hoped to eat dinner in the hotel restaurant so I didn't have to go back out.  Unfortunately, the information I had been given about the restaurant for dinner was wrong too and they never opened that night.  So I went out and grabbed a quick burrito from a fast casual restaurant down the street.

Before I went back to the room for the night, I talked to the staff again to get confirmation about the breakfast hours the next morning.