Over the Christmas holiday I had occasion to tour a golf course near Dunedin, Florida, which is just north of Tampa. My son-in-law and his two brothers decided to play a round. Since they had two golf carts, with a total of four seats, there was room for me to ride along.

Here are the three of them on one of the early holes. Note how close the golf course is to the housing development. Most houses open right onto the golf course.

As we were approaching one of the holes, I saw something unusual. Do you see it?

Look where the arrow points. There is bird perched on the pin for this hole! Moreover it stayed there when my son-in-law plopped a long shot onto the green.

See how tame this bird appears to be. My son-in-law and one of his brothers were able to approach nearly to the edge of the green before the bird took flight,

A closer look reveals our pin-sitter as a Red-Shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus). The pin provides a good perspective to search for prey.

A few holes later I spotted some large grey birds near a sand trap which bordered the fairway.

To my surprise these turned out to be Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis). They were poking around practically in someone’s back yard. There is a subspecies of G. canadensis, the Florida Sandhill Crane (G. canadensis pretensis}. This subspecies is non-migratory, whereas G. canadensis migrates from the Great Lakes area to winter in Florida. I do not know which subspecies these cranes area. They are very similar in coloration, and thus hard to distinguish.

These birds were also quite tame, and they allowed me to approach quite closely.

One was so unconcerned, it went to sleep while I was near.

So it turned out that the golf course was a wonderful place to birdwatch. In addition to the birds, I have illustrated, there were Ospreys soaring around and calling. White Ibis were also common, and many of the houses bordering the golf course had an ibis near their back yard.