This is my favorite time of the year to photograph birds in Florida. With our climate we have a nice population of birds year round, but in the spring the northern species are on their way back home and so we get a lot of new birds just passing though. Even better is that they are in the brilliant breeding plumage and so we get them at their best.

Ft. DeSoto in St. Petersburg is a great spot to chase these migrants because it site near the gulf and is often the first land that these birds may have seen for days and so they stop to re-fuel before pushing on home. It can be dramatic with several hundred birds coming in at a time. Yesterday, for example, there were 300 Hooded Warblers at the East Beach alone! Of course, I was home…BOO! I managed to get out there today though and here is a selection of what I found.

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