Surreal South Florida Birding Trip Day 1: Birding by Channel Marker Numbers

I dragged my parents on a bird chase around South Florida when I went down recently on a weekend visit.  They were pretty good sports about the whole thing, although the pace was not to their liking.  We covered long distances with too few rest stops, bypassed a couple relatives, and could not find a decent grouper sandwich.  But we did mange to find all four target birds in a 24 hour period between Orlando and South Miami by way of Fort Myers.  

Leaving the Sanford/Orlando airport around 10AM, the first stop was the Sanibel Causeway near  Fort Myers, where an American Flamingo was being reported for some weeks before my trip.  The reports advised to arrive on the incoming tide and look around the channel markers on the south side of the causeway.  The tide charts put high tide at 2:55 and my GPS device indicated it would take about three and a half hours to drive to the spot.  Unfortunately, traffic factored heavily into the equation and by the time we arrived in Fort Myers, still some 20 minutes from the causeway, it was nearing high tide and all of the sandbars would be inundated and the flamingo likely moved off to find suitable foraging habitat elsewhere.  My parents couldn't understand the cause of the urgency, and kept pointing out nice places we might stop.  When we did final arrive to the causeway the tide appeared to be dead high and no sandbar was evident anywhere.  I scanned the water with my binoculars in the area it had been reported in all those posts I read while daydreaming about the trip.  

No sign of any large pinkish-orange iconic Florida bird.  In desperation, I started asking fishermen if they had seen the bird.  I got a couple stories about Great Blue Herons and Brown Pelicans stealing fish, but nothing helpful.  One fisherman did say he had heard about the bird on the news, which somehow encouraged me.  I went for my spotting scope hoping the extra magnification would be the ticket, and started scanning.  My father had stopped pretending to look and was off talking to the fishermen about where to get a good grouper sandwich.  By now boats were racing through the channel throwing up large wakes and the water level seemed too high for any chance the bird would out there.  Without much remaining hope I scanned in the area of channel marker number 10, which was mentioned in a now remote listserv post.  Amazingly, I caught a distant glimpse of the head of a flamingo appearing and disappearing in the large wave caused by all the motor boat activity.  We all had nice looks at the bird and marveled that it hardly seemed to be bothered by all the boat traffic.  A bird that had supposedly strayed from its home range in the Bahamas was apparently content to swim for it in these hazardous waters.  Or perhaps not - within a couple of minutes it appears to have flown off presumably for more peaceful environs. 

My father, for the next several days, would remark to anyone we met how unbelievable it was that you could read a report on the internet giving a location and specific instruction about tides and be able to actually find the bird.  Of course, my father thinks many things about the internet are fair miraculous, which I suppose they are.

So what next?  A Broad-billed Hummingbird was being newly reported a couple hours south in Naples.  This was not exactly on the way to Fort Lauderdale, but we could get there with some daylight remaining.  This was not a popular suggestion and my parents looked birded out.  Alternatively, the Lazy Flamingo offered hopes of a decent grouper sandwich, seemed interestingly named, and was a convenient place to meet up with some relatives who lived in the area.  I noticed my father did not finish his grouper, which probably represents a rating of not more that two stars.  It seems we still had unfinished business in South Florida.