Disney World & Lake Apopka - 6/21-6/24

     My wife and I took my daughter for a long weekend to Disney as part of her 30th birthday celebration.  She has never outgrown the Disney experience since her first trip when she was four years old.  I don’t mind the trip there either.  I like the resort we stay at, and Florida is always good for birding and other nature sightings.  As a matter of fact, I could produce a nice list of wildlife sightings over the years for Disney property alone.  The only problem for this trip was that it was hot.  We knew at the beginning of the booking process that it would be hot in central Florida in June, but this time it was oppressive.  We dealt with it because it just happened to be equally as hot back at home too.  

I did incidental birding for three of the four days while I was with the family.  I had one day to myself, and that is when I ventured over to nearby Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive.  Over the four days I did not pick up any new life birds, as I expected, and only 11 new year birds (I hoped for more).  Some of the year birds included swallow-tailed kite, limpkin, mottled duck, anhinga, purple gallinule, black-bellied and fulvous whistling-ducks.  Last year, NJ recorded its first limpkin, which I was able to see.  This year there have been several black-bellied whistling-ducks in NJ that I declined to chase.  If I spent more time down in Cape May I probably would have added swallow-tailed kite and anhinga to my NJ list.  Also, in between visits to see said daughter in Rhode Island earlier in the year, a mottled duck made an appearance not too far from her.
Sights from Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive:  (top left) least bittern, (top right) purple gallinule and (above) fulvous whistling-duck family.  © S. Weiss

On Sunday, my wife and daughter set out early to a couple of theme parks hoping to do what they could before the temperatures soared.  This gave me the opportunity to head over to Lake Apopka.  This wildlife drive is similar to the wildlife drive at Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Atlantic County, NJ, except at Lake Apopka you don’t get eaten alive by biting flies when you step out of the car.  I only checked off 25 species for my three hours on the drive.  My highlights, not counting the dozens of large alligators, were a least bittern and the whistling-ducks.  The water levels were lower than I have seen in any of my half dozen or so trips there.  That, plus the mid 90-degree temperatures, likely kept many birds sheltered from the heat.  I left the wildlife drive with the notion to hit another birding hotspot on my way back to our resort, but the sweltering heat and the looming storm clouds heading my way squashed that thought.  My wife and daughter already gave up on theme park hopping and we’re heading to the resort pool.  That was a better idea, and I headed back to meet them.

Aside from the birding, I found a few other interesting wildlife creatures, including two new dragonflies and a new butterfly to my lists.  The dragonflies were a regal darner and a marl pennant.  The new butterfly was an orange-barred sulphur.  I added a large skink that I saw crawling around the resort.  Also, only because I like the name, I identified a Yellow Fly of the Dismal Swamp which I believe is Florida’s equivalent to New Jersey’s greenhead horsefly.  Both are vicious biting flies.

Orange-barred Sulphur at the Polynesian Resort.  © S. Weiss

(Left) marl pennant at Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive, (right) regal darner at EPCOT.  © S. Weiss

At Coronado Springs Resort, (left) an undetermined species of toothy skink, (right) yellow fly of the Dismal Swamp.  © S. Weiss

The heat aside, the trip was what I had hoped- a nice get away with my wife and daughter.

*******
At Coronado Springs Resort, (left) Palamedes swallowtail and (left) Chrysis conica.  © S. Weiss
Chrysis conica does not have a common name.  It is a sparkling, blue and green colored insect in the cuckoo wasp family.

At Coronado Springs Resort, (left) brown anole and (right) apple snail egg masses.  © S. Weiss
Anoles are all over Disney’s resorts and parks.  Apple snails are the preferred food of limpkins. They purposely lay their eggs out of the water to avoid predation by fish.


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