I attended the First Coast Birding & Nature Festival held in St. Augustine from May 11-14.  The first day, Thursday, I attended a seminar on How to Build a Backyard Habitat.  Unfortunately the speaker was not able to get her Power Point Presentation to work.  The afternoon I spent visiting the various vendor booths, then visiting the Anastasia Lighthouse and Museum.  I climbed the 219 steps to the top for a nice view of the St. Augustine area.  I then spent some time at the Anastasia State Park. In the evening I went on a Festival-sponsored trip to the Alligator Farm.  In addition to the many alligators, the back part of the area has become a roost and/or rookery area for a number of the larger wading birds, such as Greater Egret, Snowy Egret, Cattle Egret, Little Blue Heron, Tricolored Heron, Roseate Spoonbill, and Wood Stork.  It covers a much larger area than the Venice Rookery and many of the birds are quite close to the boardwalk.  There must have been a hundred photographers present when I visited the area.  The value of the photo equipment on the boardwalk must have approached a half-million dollars.

Friday morning I attended a workshop on Metering Techniques of Wildlife Photography given by Greg Downing.  This was one of the best photography workshops I ever attended.  In the afternoon I attended a workshop by Kevin Karlson on Shorebirds Made Simpler.  He introduced a new method for identifying birds.  He also discussed a new book he authored, along with two others, called The Shorebird Guide that was just released about three weeks ago. I purchased a signed copy of the book for $25.  Each shorebird species in the bird has anywhere from 6 to15 photographs showing the species in various plumages and in comparison with other similar species.  If you’re having trouble identifying shorebirds, this book would be a great help.  In the evening, I participated in a sunset photography tour aboard the schooner Freedom.

On Saturday morning, I took a joint birding/photographers trip to visit the north shore of Anastasia State Park.  The purpose of the trip was to view and photograph birds along the shore.  Both Kevin Karlson and Greg Downing participated in this trip offering information on identifying and photographing the birds.  Birds seen included Royal and Sandwich Terns; Laughing, Ring-billed, Herring, and Black-backed Gulls; Red Knots; Sanderlings; Western Sandpipers; Black Skimmers, Oystercatcher; Semipalmated and Wilson’s Plovers; and Brown Pelicans.

Although the Festival continued for another day, I chose to leave for home Saturday afternoon.  This was a smaller festival than the Space Coast Festival I attended last year at Titusville, although I heard that attendance doubled from 500 last year to 1000 this year.