I've Reached Five Hundred Before the End of April

With six new species today I have reached 502 species for the year, and it's not yet May.  Okay, so it's going to get tougher to add new ones with each new day.  But so far we haven't missed anything that was around except that &*$%# La Sagra's Flycatcher (which has my number!) and the Budgerigar (which is nearly extinct as an ABA bird).  So what were the six new species.  We got a couple of thrushes (Swainson's and Gray-cheeked) and a Black-billed Cuckoo at the Dagny Johnson Botanical SP on Key Largo.  It's a fabulous place with the best collection of tropical hardwoods in the US.  We also had a Veery and later in the day a Wood Thrush for a four-thrush day.  But we didn't get the Mangrove Cuckoo we sought.  A red Eastern Screech-Owl did stick his head out of a cavity in a dead palm tree in response to my whistling.  At a stop in Marathon to look for Roseate Terns, which nest along with Least Terns on the roof of a municipal building, we heard then saw a Northern Waterthrush (web photo), a warbler that had strangely eluded us.  On Sugarloaf Key we drove to the Mangrove Cuckoo spot where I got my lifer over forty years ago.  We had just arrived and were enjoying a couple of thrushes, when a group from Kansas drove up in three vans with the same objective.  The leader played the tape a bit long, but one of the party saw a cuckoo come in and then quickly leave.  No one else saw it.  After the group left, John and I walked back along the road and lo and behold from behind us came the machine gun call of the cuckoo.  It didn't show itself, but we had gotten the bird.  We drove on to Key West and checked into our motel that we had reserved earlier over the phone while enjoying a Starbucks coffee.  We ate at a nearby seafood restaurant and then drove to an area near the Key West airport where we ran into the group from Kansas who were also there to see and hear the Antillean Nighthawk.  John and I walked down the road a distance and heard the bird.  We're now back in the motel and looking forward to birding around Key West tomorrow for migrants.  Tomorrow night we board the boat for the Dry Tortugas.