Greetings - I was able to swing through the Belle Glade ag fields on Sunday afternoon.  This is a huge area (2000++ square miles!) of sugarcane production on the SE side of Lake Okeechobee, which also includes the King Ranch (same as in TX) sod fields that are periodically flooded as part of the production cycle to reduce nematodes.  Since none of the federal or state wetlands in Florida (such as Lake Apopka Restoration Area near Orlando, which when it was farmed years ago was the best shorebird spot in FL) or the numerous NWRs are managed for shorebirds (they are flooded for winter ducks already), this ag area west of West Palm Beach is the best habitat for shorebird stopover in FL.

With some luck, I was able to find a few flooded fields, one on US 27 across from the big tower south of South Bay, and several smaller ones east of Brown's Farm Rd -Hwy 827 ( http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=26.626897,-80.638275&spn=0.143941,0.299034&z=12    ).  Several were almost dry, and they were plowing nearby, so the numbers were down, but species diversity was fairly good.  Numbers given were approximated and a total for all the fields.

Black-necked Stilt - 200
Black-bellied Plover - 100
Semipalmated Plover - 2
Killdeer - 200
Greater Yellowlegs - 20
Lesser Yellowlegs - 100
Stilt Sandpiper - 100
Short-billed Dowitcher - 10
Long-billed Dowitcher - 10
Ruddy Turnstone - 5
Pectoral Sandpiper - 2
Bairds Sandpiper - 1 (in field with lots of water, along east side of Browns Farm)
Spotted Sandpiper - 1
Least Sandpiper - 500
Semipalmated Sandpiper - 200
Western Sandpiper - 100

Other species included Black, Least, Caspian and Gull-billed Terns, lots of waders, Wood Storks and 2 Spoonbills, and both Whistling Ducks.

No grasspipers were at the King Ranch sod fields.  Temperatures for August in the afternoon were only in the low 90s, almost refreshing with a good SE wind.

This is an important shorebird area for Florida, and worthy of some promotion of the value of flooding to the migrant shorebirds.  I would think the farmers would be very happy to gain positive PR for the recognition that they are helping wildlife with their crop rotation cycle.  I hope the Feds and State managers will wake up and take similar actions - virtually every NWR in FL has water control systems, and could easily be managed in May and August for shorebirds.  As it is, the farmers are doing more than the government, and their efforts are un-intentional!

Bob Wallace
Alachua FL