Marco Island & The Crabby Lady
I was at a bit of a standstill, stuck in the 240s trying to inch closer to 250 but it seemed like Palm Beach County was not the place to search. My husband and I went out for a day trip to Marco Island after searching on eBird and finding a lot of sightings at a restaurant called The Crabby Lady.
We woke up before sunrise and took off across Tamiami Trail. Our first stop was Ten Thousand Islands Marsh Trail, a favorite of mine when passing through the area. Being familiar with the area, I knew if there were no cars in the parking lot, our chances of seeing birds were low and as we pulled up the parking lot was empty. We went out to the lookout and saw a couple of gallinules and their babies and headed back to the car. We got to stopped at Collier State Park, but unfortunately the birding trail was flooded out due to a tropical storm so we hopped back in the car after walking around for an hour and made our way to Marco Island.
As we got to Goodland Bridge you could see all the birds on the mudflats, we pulled under the bridge and saw semipalmated plovers, Wilson’s plovers, and a short-billed dowitcher to add to my list. We had time to kill before The Crabby Lady opened up so we drove around Marco Island, observing the burrowing owl nests catching glimpses of little heads popping up here and there. When we pulled into The Crabby Lady, I knew this was the right place to have lunch, there was a mudflat in view from the tables filled with plovers, dowitchers, and many more shorebirds. We grabbed a quick lunch that was absolutely incredible, I got the crab balls (think crab cakes in ball form), Spencer got the trigger fish which was absolutely perfectly cooked. After having one of the best meals I’ve had in a while and watching dolphins, boats, and many birds pass by, we made one last stop at the public beach in Marco Island. On the beach, there were many gray kingbirds calling out and hunting for bugs in the sea grape as well as sandwich terns flying over the water hunting for a lunch as fresh as we just had.
On the way home we stopped at a few more trails and hit up Big Cypress Gallery to grab some Christmas cards designed by Niki Butcher and a print from Scott Randolph. We ended the trip adding five new species to my list putting me at 248 and itching to get two more… and then about a hundred more or so after that. Ha!
