Sandpipers, Spoonbills, and Great Blue Herons
Explore on your own or paddle along with our knowledgeable birding guide through hundreds of acres of mangrove channels and mud flats which are home to a myriad of birds, fish, crabs, and other widlife. The low tides of early morning and late afternoon are best for seeing hundreds of feeding birds.
As seen in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee, WI, March 6, 2005 (story by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) “.....at the mudflat greater yellowlegs, whimbrels, Caspian terns, willets, and black-necked stilts looked for crustaceans........My favorite was a long-billed curlew, with a beak like a curving soda straw. Kayaking the watery lanes through the mangrove thickets turned up 37 species of birds in a little more than two hours.”
You can also see many birds, often different from those found in the main body of the estuary, along the road that skirts the estuary and passes through agricultural areas between Playa Las Tortugas and the highway.
For a partial list of the birds you may find around the estuary and the adjacent area, you can download or print the following file:
PLT_Birding_List.pdf
