An unexpected surprise showed up at Fort DeSoto Park on the west coast of Florida on the morning of April 24th. A birder was looking for birds at the park and stumbled upon one of the rarest birds to ever have shown up on the west coast of Florida, a Kirtland’s Warbler! This occurrence was the second record of a Kirtland’s Warbler ever on the Gulf Coast of Florida. 
The warbler summers in three counties in Michigan, where it nests in Jack Pine land habitat. This habitat is very rare and requires the assistance of humans to maintain the proper habitat conditions.
During the fall migration, the bird usually travels south toward the Carolinas and then over a portion of the Atlantic Ocean to the Bahamas. The birds will winter along the sandy dune areas and underneath the Australian Pines waiting for the spring migration to head back north to their nesting grounds. Late April and into May brought more easterly winds this year and it could be that the small warbler was pushed further east than it intended, leading it to land on Fort DeSoto.
The bird was very easily viewed by birders from far and wide and presented lots of great photo opportunities. Most birders claimed that it was a “life bird” for them, meaning it was the first individual of that species that they had ever identified in the field. The bird stayed for the entire next day before apparently flying north on the night of April 25th. Get out there, support our parks, and you never know what you may encounter in the Florida outdoors!