Some arrive from Michigan, and points beyond in the middle and far western United States. Others come here from the Carolinas, north to Maine. Many fly in from Canada, and even points across the North Atlantic. It's winter and the snowbirds are here again.

Forget the human snowbirds - I'm talking about birds. What better place to ride out a northern winter than a long visit to Florida, people and birds alike! Winter is the time of year when lots of different birds show up to enjoy our hospitality and charm the birdwatchers among us.

Our salt marshes, woods and beaches are filled with snowbirds during the winter. If you look around, you will find them yourself. A good place to start looking is in the salt marsh and oyster beds that border Amelia Island. If you take a kayak or board a sightseeing boat, you can hardly miss the largest snowbirds in our region - the white pelicans.

White pelicans are much larger than the more common brown pelican.
_____________________________________________________

Everyone around here is used to seeing brown pelicans year 'round, flying over the beach or perched along pilings in the Fernandina Beach Marina. But in winter, these pelicans are outclassed by the visiting white pelican. With a 9 foot wingspan and weighing more than 16 pounds, these massive white pelicans tower over their brown cousins when they share resting sites.

White pelicans have a very different life history than their brown cousins, too. They spend their summers breeding on islands and sheltered shores of freshwater ponds and lakes in the middle states of the U.S. and Canada. When the air turns cold, they head to Florida and other points south to enjoy a salt-water lifestyle. Their special glands around their eyes drip tears of the excess salt they swallow in this environment. When they feed, instead of diving individually for fish, like the brown pelicans do, these large white birds form a group and together surround and herd a school of fish towards shallow water, where they can all feast together.

Other snowbirds take up winter residence on our sandy beaches and adjacent mudflats. A number of different sandpiper species, all in dull winter plumage that make them difficult to identify, find sandy beaches along our coastline to settle on for a number of months. Ruddy turnstones show up in the cooler months too, and can often be found on the rock jetties of Fort Clinch State Park.

Although they are here year round, the best time and place to find lots of black skimmers is also around the Fort Clinch jetties in winter. If you find a large group of them during a storm, don't be surprised to see them lying down flat on the sand to stay out of the wind. They are one of the few birds that lie prone when resting.

Black skimmers congregate in large groups along the beaches of Amelia Island.
___________________________________________________________

Winter is also the time that various open-ocean (pelagic) birds inadvertently get blown up on our beach. It is not unusual to find a stranded large gannet, or even a booby, blown off course and unable to fly again until the tide gets high and they can get a paddling start back into flight.

One good place to look for wintering birds of a different feather is along the Egans Creek Greenway. In the salt water areas of the Greenway, often greater and lesser yellowlegs forage in the mudflats. Wintering teal, canvasbacks, mallards and other ducks visit the saltwater and freshwater areas of the Greenway. If you look in the open sky above the Greenway in the winter you just might see some wintering birds of prey, like harriers, sharp-shinned hawks, merlins and peregrine falcons too.

Many neighborhood freshwater retention ponds also play host to groups of wintering birds. It is a beautiful sight to see hooded mergansers showing off the bold white hoods of the males and the less dramatic reddish crests of their female companions as they paddle around in backyard ponds. Sometimes a large wayward loon shows up for a spell to make things exciting.

Hooded mergansers can often be found in area freshwater ponds.
___________________________________________________

The maritime forests and backyard trees of Amelia Island provide a winter sanctuary for other snowbirds too. Get out your bird book if you want to identify small warblers - there are a number of species that winter here deep within the foliage. Most of them are various patterns and shades of yellow and brown, well camouflaged in the woods. But if you are lucky, you might spot a wintering black and white warbler, a standout among the bunch.

For many human residents and visitors to Amelia Island, one of the most interesting winter bird phenomena happens with robins. Up north, most people are used to seeing one or maybe two robins at a time, arriving in backyards in the springtime to catch worms and insects. Here in Florida, they winter in large flocks, sometimes hundreds of them, all eschewing their meat-eating lifestyle for a healthy winter break feasting on fruits and berries.

Similarly, cedar waxwings arrive in large flocks in the winter, looking for uneaten holly berries and other delicacies. It's not unusual to find an entire group of waxwings settling on a single holly tree, feasting on all the berries for a few hours, until they are gone. These waxwings are effective berry scavengers but they don't stay in one place long enough to be predictable. Now you see them, lots of them, and then you don't, as they fly off en mass to another feasting tree.

Cedar Waxwings can be seen in large groups  during the winter.
______________________________________________

Enjoy the birds of winter while they are here. Like all snowbirds, human and feathered, they will not be with us forever. Soon enough the weather will warm up and the days will get longer, cuing the birds to abandon us and head north again.

But have no fear, in the spring there will be other birds coming in from further south, traveling north to take their place in our backyards and wild spaces. What with our snowbirds from the north in the winter, our breeding birds from the south in the summer and all manner of birds here year round as well, no matter what the season, Amelia Island is for the birds!