Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge

Last October we made our first trip down to south Florida since 2004. During our past trips we spent most of our time on the Gulf Coast side of the state except for trips to the Everglades, the Keys, and Merrit Island NWR. On this trip I wanted to hit all of our favorite places and explore some new locations. So we ended up staying a couple of night on the east coast near Boca Raton. This was near Loxahatchee NWR which was one of the new locations that I wanted to try out.  

 Loxahatchee is a 145,800 acres of northern Everglades habitat located in Boyton Beach Florida. It was established in 1951 under the authority of the Migratory Bird Conservation Act. Much of the wetlands on the refuge are managed by a series of dikes, canals and other water control structures to preserve habitat for migrating waterfowl. My reason for visiting the refuge was to try and get a glimpse of a swallow-tail kite and a snail kite. Both species of kite can be found on the refuge depending on the season. I think that we were a bit late for the swallow-tail kite but we did manage to get pictures of a snail kite feeding on apple snails. The refuge also had a great butterfly garden around the visitors center. We saw a lot of new species of butterfly including this orange-barred sulphur. Both the kite and the butterfly were both lifer species for us so it was well worth it to check out a new location.

Snail Kite

The snail kite is a raptor that is pretty rare in the United States. The only population of snail kites in the U.S. is in southern Florida. Otherwise the snail kite is found in parts of the Caribbean, Central America and south America. In Florida locally endangered because wetland draining and water level controls in southern Florida are depleting the available prey of the kite.

When it comes to prey the snail kite is a specialist. Their diet consists primarily of apple snails. Their long thin beak is perfect adapted for sliding into the snail shell to get the meat inside. In Florida snail kites have been spotted eating other prey, such as turtles, crayfish and rodents, when snails can not be found but the population of the snail kites is directly affected by the population of apple snails. I photographed this female near the Loxahatchee NWR in Florida. I know that it was a female because the males are more of a blue-gray color instead of brown like the females. This was a life bird for me.

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