Finding the Birding Groove at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge

I have never experienced such a good place to introduce birding to kids as the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Florida's Sanibel Island. This was our third spring break visit to Sanibel in four years. Every year we bike half the Refuge's wildlife drive loop. This year coincided with a time when T was showing even more interest in birds. He is six, way into nature, has a growing interest in birds and just got some kids binoculars that work really well for him.

Osprey on nest platform along the Rabbit Road area bike trail.

We picked a morning that would include low tide.  Thus many of the wading birds would be feeding in the exposed mud flats and shallow waters. Our full group went- Hillary, her mom, me, T, H, and Hillary's sister's family of four. The place we stay is an easy 1.5 mile bike ride from Ding Darling. So we warmed up on bird watching by stopping and watching the Ospreys and their nest on the nesting platform along the bike trail. It takes a while to successfully look through binoculars and get the desired bird in your view. So this was good practice for all.

T watching the birds at the first stop on Wildlife Drive.

Once we got to the refuge we biked right onto Wildlife Drive. We passed a Little Blue Heron just off the drive.  I didn't announce its presence as parents and kids were busy chatting and I knew there would be plenty of birds ahead. Sure enough we got to the first viewing area and saw scads of birds on the large open water and exposed mud flats. After viewing a few herons and such, we made our way over to the spotting scope that a Refuge volunteer had set up. While H was looking through it, T somehow saw a different bird flying far away along the edge of the mangroves. He said, "there's a Roseate Spoonbill!" He had been looking at the bird book before, so I assumed that he recognized it from the book. The Refuge volunteer glassed the flying bird and said, "you're right, that is a Roseate Spoonbill!  I haven't seen one of those for several weeks."  T, of course got a quite a thrill out of that, mentioning it several times over the next few days. 

"Squishing" for fiddler crabs along Wildlife Drive.

Once again the rest of the group got ahead of me as I scanned for more birds.  T was hanging with me and his six-year old attention span was reaching its limit. I was little surprised, actually, but the bumpy road turned out to be his chief complaint.  He proclaimed he was not going any further. So we took a break.  After various attempts to take his mind off the road and how far we were from the rest of the group, I suggested he go search for fiddler crabs long the water's edge.  He walked down to the muddy area and quickly delighted in his ability to drive fiddler crabs out of their burrows as he stepped along side them.  He walked back and forth a few more times and was ready to go with  his attitude and attention rejuvenated. 

From here on T was really getting in the groove of wildlife watching.  I was teaching him more about recognizing key field marks for identifying birds.  What size is it? What shape and color bill does it have? What color are its wings, its belly, legs, etc.  As he was already studying the different parts of birds in first grade, he was really primed to recognize field marks.  Plus, his young eyes mean he can see really well.  The sign posts of birds commonly seen along different sections of Wildlife Drive were helpful too. 

Of course it was the alligator sighting on our way back that was especially exciting.  T asked for my phone and took about twenty pictures of the sunning alligator, a spider on its web, and his alligator-mimicking dad. 

Finding an alligator was of course a major goal for the kids.  So I called Hillary and H who were already at the visitor's center.  They rushed back to see it much to the delight of H. The pressure was off now, we saw an alligator. 

A long time (1 hour? maybe 1.5 hours) after T proclaimed he was not going any further, we made it back to the visitor center near the beginning of Wildlife Drive.  At that point T realized that he left his helmet back at the cut-off trail where we saw the Pied-bill Grebe.  Without a better option handy, I told him to wait for me at the bike racks while I took the 20 some minute round trip to retrieve his helmet.  When I returned I found him recording what we had seen in his journal.  What a wonderful scene to return to! 

Thinking we were mostly done for the day, we headed back to our place.  But T was completely in the bird watching groove by now.  We stopped again to watch the Ospreys on the nesting platform for about 10 minutes.  We watched a few of them circle overhead and got a great view of the distinct shape of an Anhinga flying overhead. Then we spotted a Great Egret and a Night Heron (yellow-crowned, if I remember correctly).  From too tired to go any further, to totally grooving on finding birds, it was a morning to remember.  What a treat to see T experiencing the rush of bird watching that birders live for.