Chasing a Chat and a Hummer

A pair of rare species have been reported in Naples: a Broad-billed Hummingbird and a Yellow-breasted Chat, one rare specie is enticing but two is even more alluring. With this temptation dangling in the wings - what's a girl to do!....make plans and meet up with Meg & Elaine...and off we go. Come along and see....

Our first stop was Freedom Park in Naples - it is down right chilly - so much so that we can see our breath. We bundled up for the occasion but when looking at this Squirrel I longed for my long gone fur coat.

Our intentions for this park was to locate the Broad-billed Hummingbird - our pal Meg got a quick glimpse of it but we never saw it. One of our pal from the Caloosa Club shared his theory that the Hummingbird might be finding his food sources across the way in the Naples Zoo and coming across the road on a few occasion. In the mean time, I delighted in watching this Red-bellied Woodpecker in the delicious morning light.

There must be some tasty and juicy morsel in this little nook and cranny - check out his tongue!

After searching for the hummer for over an hour, we decided to move on to our next location....the Sugden Park for the Chat. In the meantime we located a Downy Woodpecker - a busy one at that.

A young Mallard was in the back portion of the park.

And so was the Green Heron.

A Bald Eagle could be seen feeding its chick.

And the lovely Yellow-breasted Chat! We were there for almost two hours and saw him on three separate occasion.

This time I got lucky enough to get a somewhat decent photo - oh what a beauty! We were quite happy to have found our go to specie and decided to have another try at the Freedom Park for the Hummer.

No hummer was found but we did stumbled upon this 1st year male Summer Tanager.

This was a nice find and quite unexpected - what a great way to end a great birding day!