How a colony of egrets made Miami’s inner city its winter home

BY LINDA ROBERTSON

FEBRUARY 19, 2019 07:00 AM,

UPDATED FEBRUARY 19, 2019 08:40 AM

By Matias J. Ocner

Beneath stacks of highway overpasses, hard by a county jail, inside barbed-wire fencing and perched above a concrete-colored pond, it’s a sight for sore eyes: Egrets. A couple of hundred egrets, impossibly white against the dingy landscape, as if they were dipped in fluffy clouds on their flight down from the sky.

They have found a winter home in Miami’s inner city. True snowbirds, they’re staying at a green condo of bushes just north of Northwest 14th Street between Northwest Seventh Avenue and I-95, on vacant Florida Department of Transportation land dotted with royal palms, oaks and ceiba trees. Discarded McDonald’s wrappers, Doritos bags, coffee cups, cigarette butts, shoes, sweatshirts and bedsheets have collected against the surrounding fences. Traffic zooms overhead and the loud noise bounces off large support columns sunk into the water.

“It’s like an oasis for them,” said Alex Gomez, a cook walking to work. “It’s the closest thing to a swamp around here.”

Continued

Miami's Wild Parrots Are Being Poached, and There's No Law to Protect Them

MOLLY MINTA | JUNE 5, 2018 | 8:00AM

Every morning for the past 25 years, a flock of blue and gold macaws has flown into Daria Feinstein’s backyard in Coral Gables. They swoop between surrounding homes and over boats docked on the nearby canal to perch on Feinstein’s royal palms and poincianas or maybe have a bite to eat on the artificial nests she’s set up for them.

In 2010, one of Feinstein’s favorite wild parrots, Scruffy — an old blue and gold macaw she named for the bird's frayed feathers — began showing up in her yard with a youngster she named Fuzzy for a fluff of red fuzz on his head.

 “He was a character,” Feinstein says of Fuzzy. The baby would always disobey Scruffy and swoop down to eat before he was given the signal. “I was afraid he’d never get airborne because he’d eat so much.”

A year later, Fuzzy disappeared. Feinstein thought perhaps he’d grown up and found a mate in a different place. "But," she says, “one by one, more birds just kept disappearing.”

Feinstein began to hear similar reports from fellow members of the Bird Lovers Club, a nonprofit dedicated to South Florida’s avian population. A professor at the University of Miami told her someone came on campus with a net gun and took six birds. One of the other feeders in her neighborhood said the macaws were flying at night. “Parrots don’t fly after nightfall,” Feinstein says. “Something scared them.”

Feinstein realized the parrots were being poached. Since 2010, she says, the number of blue and gold macaws in her neighborhood has gone from 44 to 12 because of legal poaching. Parrots can sell for thousands of dollars each on local and national websites, which is significant motivation for poachers.

Read on  

Man arrested for attempting to smuggle nine live birds through airport security by hiding them in his pants

Passenger arrested at Miami airport for trying to smuggle nine live birds 

U.S. Customs found three birds in his pants and six in his fanny pack

The birds were turned over to the the Department of Agriculture in Miami  

By VALERIE EDWARDS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 14:48, 27 January 2016 | UPDATED: 06:05, 28 January 2016

A passenger who was traveling from Cuba to Miami was arrested after he was caught trying to smuggle live birds in his pants. 

The man had just arrived from Havana when U.S. Customs and Border Protection searched him at the Miami International Airport. 

Customs agents found six exotic birds in his fanny pack and three more hidden in his groin area.

A man attempted to smuggle nine live birds into Miami. He had six birds in his fanny pack and three in his pants

Agents selected the man for further examination and during inspection they discovered the passenger was carrying the birds 

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s, Homeland Security Investigations and US Fish and Wildlife Service were on-site for the investigation that occurred on January 9.

Agents selected the individual for further examination and during inspection, they discovered that the passenger was concealing the nine birds, according to the US Customs and Border Protection. 

Read more:

Driver finds owl trapped in car grille

13 February 2013 

When a motorist was flagged down in a car park in Miami, the last thing she expected to be told was that she had a stowaway on board.

Sonji Coney Williams had been driving her car for a day before a Great Horned Owl was spotted trapped in the grille of her vehicle.

Beth McLeod reports.

Video:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21439857

Turkey vulture hits police helicopter

Bird goes through windshield of Miami-Dade Police Department chopper

MIAMI -

A turkey vulture flew through the windshield of a Miami-Dade Police Department helicopter Tuesday morning, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing.

The 3 pound bird hit the pilot of the Miami-Dade Police Department Eurocopter AS350 in the face, said police. He was flying alone and wearing protective goggles at the time, protecting his eyes, but shards of glass cut his face.

Continued:  http://www.local10.com/news/Turkey-vulture-hits-police-helicopter/-/1717324/17817000/-/format/rss_2.0/-/15mo92e/-/index.html

The island that Miami forgot: Historic Bird Key teems with pelicans, egrets, ibises — and trash

There’s an uninhabited island in Biscayne Bay where a dozen species of birds whoop loudly in the treetops, stingrays nudge the shore, manatees linger and dolphins are a common sight.

It’s called Bird Key. And it’s covered in garbage.

From the waterline deep into the mangroves, there are tires, deck chairs, wood planks, beer cans, plastic bottles, children’s toys, fishing line, shoes, crates, coolers, plastic drums and an endless array of urban debris that Biscayne Bay swallowed up and spat out.

Sitting 500 yards offshore, just south of the 79th Street Causeway, Bird Key is one of Biscayne Bay’s oldest and most ecologically important islands. It was surveyed by the British crown and fought over by early settlers. Investors acquired it, and preservationists covet it. Yet little has been written about the island. And litter has been accumulating there for decades.

Formed by the outflow of the Little River, Bird Key is one of only two natural islands in the bay north of the Rickenbacker Causeway. At least 20 other uninhabited islands were created from spoil material dredged from the bay bottom when navigation channels were dug in the early 1900s. Those manmade islands serve as habitats for plants and recreation areas for boaters, but have little permanent birdlife.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/14/3140746/the-island-that-miami-forgot-historic.html#storylink=cpy