Marian and I left Cocoa, FL on Thursday, Jan 18th and visited Epcot Center, a place that can be decribed as a nice place for a walk where you spend a lot to park to be able to pay a lot to enter where you can spend a lot for mediocre food and on Disney Brand merchandise. Anyway, it was a pleasant day. On the walk around the center pond we saw the various “country demonstrations”, had some Tex-Mex food, and visited a few exhibits with rides.

That night we stayed in a nearby area with more “entertainment park” stuff, and headed south. We made a very nice stop at Loxahatchee NWR, where we spent a couple of hours walking on the marsh trail, Purple Galinule, Yellow-throated Warbler, Sandhill Cranes being the birding highlights, and then on to spend two nights in Miami Beach. We splurged on a hotel right in the middle of the tourist area, the Esmé, a tiny room but nice place. Overall good food, a nice beach, and it was nice to show Marian the place.

From there we drove down to Marian’s frineds place in Big Pine Key, where we will be staying for about 10 days before I head back to Miami for a couple of days of birding before the Santa Marta’s in Colombia with Bruce LaBar and Gene Revelas.
Today was very windy here, so I found shelter in a place called the “Blue Hole” where I found a small warbler flock with a Black-and-white Warbler and an American Redstart with the many Yellow-rumped and one Palm Warbler.

A nice afternoon walk to No Name Key was surprisingly without waders.
Good birding.