Rare Tropical Blackbirds at Fort De Soto Park
For the past two weeks birders across Florida have been flocking to Fort De Soto Park.
To see two individual birds hanging out with each other.
One a Smooth-billed Ani, the other a Groove-billed Ani.
These two birds are rare in these parts. Of the two, the Groove-billed Ani is rarer, primarily ranging in Central America and northern South America, but rarely into Florida. The Smooth-billed Ani covers the same territory, but does range into South Florida from time to time. But to see these two birds together in one location - in the Tampa Bay area of all places - is quite rare. These are the kind of tropical rarities that are normally spotted in South Florida.
The first report of these strange looking blackbirds began hitting social media pages on November 9, 2025. Since then they have been pretty easy to spot as they have settled around at Fort De Soto’s old park ranger’s house that was abandoned after last summer’s hurricanes.
I actually tried to photograph the Ani’s on December 20th, but didn’t have any luck. But with reports still coming in on a near daily basis, I decided to give it a second chance.
Glad I did.
Weather was pretty grim. Skies were overcast and gray with rain expected around sunset. I arrived at about 1:30pm, just an absolute terrible time of day to photograph wildlife, but the cloud cover actually worked to my advantage. The clouds acted as a big soft box in the sky, softly diffusing the light so that no shadows were being cast.
I walked over to the ranger’s house and saw two ladies and one gentleman pointing binoculars and cameras in the same direction. And there he was - a single Smooth-billed Ani perched atop a tangle of brush. Well, that was easy.
iPhone photo of the brush where the Ani’s were first discovered.
I started photographing the Smooth-billed Ani from about 25-30 feet away with my Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens attached to a monopod. The bird seemed unphased by our presence, yet we were still being very quiet with slow movements to not cause the bird any distress.
Smooth-billed Ani. Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/1250 sec, ISO 1250.
Smooth-billed Ani. Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/1250 sec, ISO 1100.
All of the photos of these birds I had seen showed two perfectly black birds. Of course, many of those photos were improperly exposed so that the dark feathers were too dark with no feather detail. In this tight crop above, you can see that these birds have some beautiful v-shaped brownish blue patterns, particularly in the neck area. Descriptions of the birds also report that the feathers are iridescent, but without directional sunlight I couldn’t see it.
After photographing the Smooth-billed Ani for a few minutes I finally lifted my eye off the eyepiece when I discovered the Groove-billed Ani was right there too! It was a little below the Smooth-billed, near the base of the brush pile. It quickly darted into the brush and popped back out with a wasp in its bill. Behavior! Spectacular!
Groove-billed Ani. Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/1600 sec, ISO 1800.
Groove-billed Ani. Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/1600 sec, ISO 1800.
After about five minutes, the birds decided it was time to move on so they flew to a nearby cluster of palms. There they dove into the underbrush where they stayed for about 15 minutes. I looked around to see if I could find some other birds, but only Palm Warblers were bouncing around, seemingly powered by their constant tail pumping.
Soon, the Ani’s appeared at another clump of brush. I focused on the Smooth-billed Ani who was doing some jaw-stretching behavior. It reminded me of a raptor trying to expel a pellet, but of course that didn’t happen. No sound was emitted while he opened his bill, so I’ll chalk it up to a big Saturday afternoon yawn.
Smooth-billed Ani. Nikon Z8 with Nikkor Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S lens at f/6.3, 1/1250 sec, ISO 3600.
The Groove-billed Ani perched on a nearby branch and I thought the palm fronds made for a nice background. Soon after, both took off into more understory, and with shots in the can, I took that as my sign to move on.
It’s always fun to photograph rarities, and with Florida’s subtropical location they seem to pop up here quite regularly.
We have more rain in the forecast tomorrow, so I’ll decide where to go after morning church services. I’m leaning to a trip to MacDill Air Force Base, though I haven’t been out there in quite some time and don’t know what to expect. We’ll see.
Happy birding!
