Date: 1/5/25 10:50 am From: Galveston Ornithological Society <galornsoc...> Subject: [NFLbirds] possible coastal caracara explanation
I believe there is a larger picture to the caracara enigma. There are several bird species and other creatures like various reptiles who all share a common event. The Florida Peninsula has a number of species not normally seen in the East, but are quite common further West, like Texas and beyond. The habitat of Central Florida (particularly) is more like states further west, arid and hot, etc. I have read that the hypothesis describes a contiguous habitat connecting South Florida to Texas, etc., with ancestral species being found across this ancient swath. Species included in this phenomenon include birds such as caracara, Sandhill Crane, Burrowing Owl, scrub-jay types, etc., reptiles including Indigo Snake, Gopher Tortoise, etc., and likely Gopher and Crawfish Frogs. Mammals include Armadillo and it gets pretty hairy after that. Bad joke. But mammals are not my thing.
Anyway, when the Wisconsin Ice Age waned, sea levels rose up to places like Cody Scarp, just south of Rickards High School, and available habitat for these dry land organisms vanished. This separated the Florida populations from Texas ones and in many cases, like the frogs and gopher tortoises, they speciated. Others have evolved into separate races (subspecies), the last step before speciation. Some like the cranes have re-populated certain agreeable habitats like in the Coastal Plain of Eastern Mississippi, others eke out a living in larger swaths. And in just the past fifty or so years, we have seen the armadillos in Texas and Florida reconnect along this corridor, in a different kind of migration from the typical spring-fall migration we see so profoundly with birds.
This is exactly what I think is going on with caracaras. They have moved east into Louisiana from Texas, and they have been seen apparently on rare occasions along coastal Florida Panhandle. Limpkin have moved further west from Florida and have populated scattered sites in Louisiana and Texas. [If you aren’t shaking your head in near disbelief, you need to read that again!] Unsuccessful species like scrub-jays and Burrowing Owls haven’t gone very far but in Texas we see BUOWs occasionally go as far as East Texas and barely into Louisiana. So I have no problem believing caracaras along the Florida Panhandle Coast.
I suspect the reason we have never had a caracara reported in Leon County is that it’s not exactly on the coastal tract from the Peninsula to Alabama and beyond. Could one veer off to the north and get seen by a sharp-eyed birder? Of COURSE!!! My only point was that for a new county record, those two photos just don’t “do it.” Note: I never read any account of this bird and perhaps if she saw more than the images show, it’s all good. And for God’s sakes (since it’s Sunday), this is not a measure of her birding skills. It’s about doing science right, so future books provide accurate information to the public. It matters. It’s not about somebody’s Leon County List, or life list, or our CBC vs. Gainesville’s (God, I hope we in that one!) or whatever. And personalities, feelings, men vs. women in the field, list competition and anything else must stand aside and let science do its job. She has done everything she can do and done it right.
Because of that, and only that, I have not seen enough evidence to make that camera blip a new species for the county of my birth. Go find it and blast it with your Nikon! Or have folks view it and write up descriptions. But absent that, let it drop and don’t muddy our avian historical records with a maybe bird.
