Dr. John Schwartz
The La Sagra’s flycatcher resting in the branches of a gumbo limbo tree.
Jacque and Larry Goodhew.
Photos by Malcom Balfour and Dr. John Schwartz
By Malcolm Balfour
After a disappointing five-day bird-watching jaunt to Key West, Larry and Jacque Goodhew of Walla Walla, Wash., were already north of Tampa on their way home when the news broke. Another rare bird that Larry had never seen, a La Sagra’s Caribbean flycatcher, had been sighted that very afternoon in Palm Beach County.
“Right away we packed up our bedding, placed the Lantana Nature Preserve address in our GPS and headed back south for 300 miles,” said Larry.
According to several rare bird websites, the La Sagra, native to the Caribbean, was probably blown over from Grand Bahama by recent strong easterly winds.
Dozens of bird watchers flocked to the Nature Preserve to view the rare bird, bigger than a sparrow and smaller than a dove, with a pointed beak and a puffy white chest.
The Goodhews were lucky. They arrived at the Nature Preserve to find a crowd of birders showing off their images to one another.
“It’s in the Butterfly Garden right now,” said Jan Warwick, of Pascagoula, Miss. “Straight down this main pathway,” he indicated.
“We’ll take you there,” said Jean Mallowes of Jupiter, who’d come down to the Nature Preserve with her friend Marlyn Reuter. “We want to see if we can get a better view of the bird.”
The Goodhews hustled down the path, looking right, left and upward.
“There it is. Look, on the wild coffee plant,” whispered Larry, loud enough to cause the bird to fly a few yards away into a large gumbo limbo tree. There it offered a much better view for their cameras.
The La Sagra’s flycatcher marked the 713rd bird for Larry, 78, who has sighted just two more than Jacque, 72. “We’re a couple of lifelong hippies, living in an old truck,” he said.
“This is wonderful, we got a great hit,” Jacque said, as she settled back in their live-aboard truck. She and her husband had spent five whole days in Key West looking in vain for a quail dove. “Dozens of others photographed it. We just kept missing it by seconds.”
Birders live by an honor code. Nobody verifies sightings.
Armed with his camera, Dr. John Schwarz, a retired ophthalmologist from Boston now living in Boynton Beach, stalked the bird like the pro that he is. The avid birder even has his own website, birdspix.com.
The La Sagra seemed quite restless as Schwarz photographed it, refusing to remain on the same branch for more than a second or two. Determined not to lose sight of it, he kept his head tilted back, taking shot after shot with no complaints of a pain in the neck.
He told of the recent morning when he received a call from a friend in St. Louis who’d spotted an extremely rare bird.
“Right away I checked for a flight, went down to the airport and got a plane to St. Louis and that very afternoon I was photographing an ivory gull for the first time. It’s the most pristine white gull,” he said.
Asked what he likes best about birding, he said: “You meet a lot of very nice people.”
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