Sounds like you were in birdwatching paradise, Joe.   I love hg's bird photos she puts up on Facebook from her kayaking on the rivers there in the panhandle.

We used to spend the winters down in the Keys and spent a lot of time kayaking, camping on keys in the backcountry of Florida Bay and birdwatching. In spring, when birds migrate across Gulf from South and Central America, the lower Keys are the first land they come to after that long flight over water. One spring, when we were camping in the Content Keys, which are right on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico - several migrating Prothonotary Warblers made landfall. We didn't know then that they were migratory, or migrating - had never seen one, but were amazed that they seemed so tame or fearless that they allowed us to walk right up to them. Could probably have picked them up in our hands. Later, the folks at the botanical garden in Key West told us it wasn't unusual in the spring. The birds are simply too exhausted to care or react.

Watching a goldfinch that is so wet from a recent intense downpour it is having trouble flying.