Florida Field Naturalist Published by the Florida Ornithological Society
Florida Field Naturalist PUBLISHED BY THE FLORIDA ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY VOL. 41, NO. 2 MAY 2013 PAGES 29-69 Florida Field Naturalist 41(2):29-41, 2013. REDDISH EGRET (Egretta rufescens) NESTING IN CLEARWATER HARBOR AND ST. JOSEPH SOUND, PINELLAS COUNTY, AND CRYSTAL BAY, CITRUS COUNTY, FLORIDA FROM 1991 TO 2011 ANN B. HODGSON1 AND ANN F. PAUL Florida Coastal Islands Sanctuaries, Audubon Florida, 410 South Ware Boulevard, Suite 702, Tampa, Florida 33619 1Current address: Resource Designs Inc., Natural Resource Research & Planning, P. O. Box 311, Brooksville, Florida 34605 Abstract.—Through the 1880s, Reddish Egrets (Egretta rufescens) occurred through- out Florida, and commonly among coastal colonial waterbird colonies in Pinellas County north to the St. Martins Keys in Citrus County. By around 1910, plume hunting and the associated disturbance at nesting colonies extirpated Florida’s breeding population of Reddish Egrets, and nesting egrets were not found again in southern Florida until 1938. The first nesting record on Florida’s central Gulf coast since 1890 occurred at the Alafia Bank Bird Sanctuary in Hillsborough Bay in 1974. Egrets slowly reappeared at suitable estuarine nesting sites throughout Tampa Bay and the nearby coast, and solitary pairs or small breeding groups now nest on at least 15 colony islands stretching from Three Rooker Island State Preserve (northern Pinellas County) south to Hemp Key in Pine Island Sound (Charlotte County), with the largest nesting concentration persisting at the Alafia Bank Bird Sanctuary. In Clearwater Harbor and St. Joseph Sound, egrets nested on eight dredged spoil-material islands from 1991 to 2011 (annual colony size –x = 0.01-2.8 nests, SD = 0.4-4.5, N ≤ 21 years).
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