Florida: Introduction and Travel Day

We flew to Florida on Saturday 31 August 2024, to spend a couple of weeks touring the Keys, Everglades and various other sites of interest on both the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic coast with a particular emphasis on birding locations.

Before we travelled we did extensive research from a number of sources (books and videos) but particularly the following:

• Mark Smith YouTube Channel – plus his excellent book, Birding in Florida
• BritHikesOntario YouTube Channel – particularly their information about Birding in Florida
• Bob Duchesne YouTube Channel – he does an excellent video on birding sites in the everglades

I have also prepared a Google Map with pindrops of various locations throughout Florida, including the hotels we booked, if anyone finds it useful!

This is available at Google Maps: Florida Trip

We flew out from Newcastle Airport, on the 10.55am flight operated by TUI. We flew by this route because the times suited us, and lets face it, it was cheap…well, relatively so compared to other options!

The food on the plane was OK, with free drinks (alcoholic if you wanted it) and two meals (a lunch and an afternoon tea with sandwiches).

Though we were an hour late setting off, we made good time, and were only about 15 minutes late arriving at Melbourne Orlando Airport. Baggage claim, immigration and car hire was a breeze, and we were on the road within an hour of landing – great news, as it meant we could get to our first hotel before dark.

We did the 150 mile trip down to Fort Lauderdale in about two and a half hours passing through some pretty severe rain storms on the way….but the the highlight of the journey down was the encouraging number of birds we saw. all from the i95 Interstate road…

We lost count of the number of Egrets and Heron we saw – well over 20, with the best being a Tri-coloured Heron. There were also Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets, tpgether with half a dozen birds of prey, that I was unable to identify while driving, though one was clearly a type of kite, and another was massive, so presumably an Eagle, probably a Bald Eagle as there are lots in the area.

As I said, all very encouraging, so when I get the camera out I hope to get shots of all these and more.

We arrived at our hotel, the Best Western Fort Lauderdale i95 at around 6.30 in the evening.

This gave us plenty of time to pop out for a bite to eat – there was a fast food grill just over the road, so just afterbecause we just wanted something small, we ordered a small plate of chicken tenders with side salad……errrr, they don’t seem to do small in the states, so this is what arrived…

As I type this it is 8.00pm in the evening, though in UK time, that is 1.00 in the morning….my body clock is confused, as I feel tired, but it is still daylight….!!!

Tomorrow we head down to Key West.