Tamiami Double Tick

It was back to the residential area near the Baptist Hospital for the Red-whiskered Bulbul first thing this morning.  Unlike yesterday, however, we found the bird plus I heard a Bobolink overhead.  From there we drove to Bill Baggs Park on Key Biscayne where we looked and listened for the La Sagra's Flycatcher which had been seen and heard yesterday.  For and hour we gave it our best, but didn't score, but we did get a nice male Black-throated Blue Warbler which was new for the list.  Then came the rain, buckets and buckets of it.  We went for the car and drove to a nearby Starbucks to wait out the storm.  That deluge took over an hour.  We drove north and checked the marine rehab facility for the Red-footed Booby with no luck.  At that point we decided to drive out of the rain and head west.  We got on US41 and drove to Miccosuki's Restaurant looking on the way for Snail Kites.  We did in fact drive out of the rain and into the sunshine.  At the restaurant a Limpkin flew out of one marsh, across the road, and into another marsh where it was greeted by a second Limpkin (web photo).  We moved to the other side of the restaurant complex and there we found a great pair of Snail Kites apparently conducting some courtship.  Heading back to the city, we detoured down toward Homestead, but the venture didn't produce anything new.
We stopped by to see my good friend, Becky White, who lives in Cutler Ridge.  Her daughter Debbie joined us a bit later.  We had a wonderful time chatting about birds, blossoms, and mutual friends.  For the third night in a row we booked into the Motel 6 in Cutler Bay.  The five new birds today brought the year's list to 488.