I drove an hour north in late January to look for a rare bird. The sun had not gotten up over the trees as I was heading into the entrance to Chinsegut Wildlife Area. 

Behind the nature center I found lots of bird feeders. The first birds on the feeders were goldfinches. The males don’t have their bright yellow breeding feathers yet so they are a little drab but still pretty.

Sitting behind the center I could see sandhill cranes flying far away.

A male (red feathers) and a female house finch joined the goldfinches.

Yellow rumped warblers were on the suet feeder. You can see by the one leaving on the right how they got their name.

Pine warblers sharing the suet.

Red winged blackbirds were enjoying the seed on the platform.

A pine warbler enjoying the jelly feeder.

The real reason I drove an hour north this early morning was to see the rare Scott’s oriole that comes in to feed on the jelly feeder. This is the first time I’ve heard of this bird being in Florida so it was a lifer for me. People had driven from all over the state to see it. These orioles live in the western half of the country, rarely coming east of Texas. He stayed hidden and only came to the feeder a few times this morning. So yes, it wasn’t like I was hiking around and looking hard to find it like usual. Other birders had been reporting it a few days before so it was an easy find to add to my list.

There’s a fairly large population of red headed woodpeckers here and one flew into a snag near the nature center and posed for a few minutes.