Hunt for the Blob

7/29/2017

I initially was going to survey the Boca Chica Route this morning, but after getting wind of a pair of Swallow-tailed Kites that had apparently bedded down near the McAllen Parrot Roost Thursday night, my friend Baceliza and I headed out there early Friday morning to see if we could find them before they lifted off.  We got a good exercise walk instead J but did find the giant oak woodland in a gated community that the birds had apparently gone to, seeing tons of Clay-colored Thrushes and a few Orchard Orioles.  The best bird was a young Gray Hawk that we flushed.  

Immature Gray Hawk in an urban neighborhood in McAllen

But in conversation it came out that she had never seen a Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, and the one up along Brushline Road was still being reported, so she and her husband Alan were game to go after that Saturday, and by promising my friend Pat that we’d wrap up by 10:00 J we talked her into coming as well!  So after meeting at the Flying J in Edinburg we all piled into Heppy and headed up.  Just after turning north onto Brushline from SR 186 I stopped and stepped out long enough to start the eBird list, and the place was alive with birdsong:  the first thing to hit the air after I got out was a flyover Upland Sandpiper!  A Long-billed Curlew came by shortly after that, and besides the Common Nighthawk beenting overhead, there were lots of Verdin, Olive Sparrows, a Curve-billed Thrasher (amongst the abundant Mockingbirds), Kiskadees, Bewick’s Wrens, Yellow-billed Cuckoos, and even a distant Roadrunner! 

Pat, Alan, and Baceliza comb the mesquites for the elusive Ferruginous Pygmy Owl

The spot where the owl was hanging out was only a mile up the road, so we headed up there and parked, scrutinizing the mesquites carefully.  Pat wandered down the road until she heard some Mockingbirds mobbing something and waved us all down, and after some diligent looking, Baceliza did find a blob that looked the right size and shape, and looked to be turning its head, but being against the light it was hard to tell.  Pat only saw a blob, and I couldn’t find it at all before it was suddenly gone (and the cacophony suddenly ended as well), so I would have been willing to bet an ice cream that was probably the Ferruginous Pygmy, but for poor Baceliza that just wasn’t a countable look.  We comforted her with the fact that the thing’s been reported almost daily for a couple of months, so she and Alan would undoubtedly have more chances, now that they knew the area it had been showing up (along with a second bird according to some reports), and to follow the mobbing!

We continued north after that, getting great looks at the cuckoo family:  Yellow-billed Cuckoos, Groove-billed Anis, and even a pair of Roadrunners trotting down the road in front of us, wagging their tails as they went!  The ranch entrance at the end of Chapa Road was hopping with three female/young flycatchers: Vermilion, Scissor-tailed, and an unidentified kingbird!  An odd thick-billed thing popped up and left that after much mulling over I finally decided was a young Blue Grosbeak, and while we heard Cactus Wren we never did see one.  One of the oddest birds was a flyover Green Heron, which we saw later on a wire!

Yellow-billed Cuckoo (that was sitting right in the open until I got the camera out...)

Groove-billed Ani

Pat was interested in getting Botteri’s Sparrow for the county, as this was an area I’d had them in the past, but not recently, and not today, alas.  We did hear a distant Cassin’s, and several Lark Sparrows and even a couple of Black-throated made an appearance.  Mourning Doves were out the yin yang, so we had to scrutinize the flocks on the road before plowing through them to make sure we weren’t ignoring Bobwhite, Pyrrhuloxias, or even Ground Doves!  After Brushline turned east we spotted a single Harris’s Hawk in a tree, and at the farm pond at the end of the road a good number of water birds were concentrated as most of it was dry:  lots of Black-necked Stilts and Snowy Egrets (with a token Great flying around), a handful of both yellowlegs, and a few Semipalmated Sandpipers in amongst all the Leasts.  Coming back out, the road-killed Armadillo we had passed had suddenly been discovered by a cadre of both Black and Turkey Vultures and a whole gang of Caracaras!  That was quite the show, especially watching the caracaras throwing their heads back and rattling at each other!

Crested Caracara pair on a pole (where they usually are)

...and on the ground, where they sometimes are when there's been a road kill!  (Turkey Vulture on the right - even though they're bigger, I've noticed that they tend to defer to the Caracaras...)

These are all youngsters, as what will be white as an adult is now creamy, but the one with a blue face is even younger!

Many more wait their turn in a tree (note the guy on the upper right throwing his head back in a rattle)!

We took it slow going back by the owl spot, but didn’t hear any mobbing, so called it quits for that eBird report.  But that wasn’t the end of the birding as we picked up tons of Cave Swallows nesting under the overpass at the freeway, and Pat spotted a Swainson’s Hawk at the Flying J parking lot!  For a short morning, we didn’t do badly with 55 species.  Bird List:

  Northern Bobwhite                    

  Great Egret                          
  Snowy Egret                          
  Cattle Egret                         
  Green Heron                          
  Black Vulture                        
  Turkey Vulture                       
  Harris's Hawk                        
  Swainson's Hawk                      
  Black-necked Stilt                   
  Greater Yellowlegs                   
  Lesser Yellowlegs                    
  Upland Sandpiper                     
  Long-billed Curlew                   
  Least Sandpiper                      
  Semipalmated Sandpiper               
  Laughing Gull                        
  Eurasian Collared-Dove               
  Mourning Dove                        
  Inca Dove                             
  Common Ground-Dove                   
  Yellow-billed Cuckoo                 
  Greater Roadrunner                   
  Groove-billed Ani                    
  Common Nighthawk                     
  Golden-fronted Woodpecker            
  Ladder-backed Woodpecker             
  Crested Caracara                     
  Vermilion Flycatcher                 
  Brown-crested Flycatcher             
  Great Kiskadee                       
  Couch's Kingbird                     
  Scissor-tailed Flycatcher            
  Green Jay                            
  Purple Martin                        
  Cave Swallow                         
  Black-crested Titmouse               
  Verdin                               
  Bewick's Wren                        
  Cactus Wren                          
  Curve-billed Thrasher                
  Northern Mockingbird                 
  European Starling                    
  Olive Sparrow                        
  Cassin's Sparrow                      
  Lark Sparrow                         
  Northern Cardinal                    
  Pyrrhuloxia                          
  Blue Grosbeak                        
  Painted Bunting                      
  Red-winged Blackbird                  
  Eastern Meadowlark                   
  Great-tailed Grackle                 
  Orchard Oriole                       
  House Sparrow                        

55 SPECIES

Shooting the Shorebirds

7/24/17 

I had barely landed from a two-week road trip up to Michigan when Keith announced that a last-minute visitor from Austin might want some guiding Monday!  (Justin, one of our “back-up guides”, was taking care of him Saturday and Sunday…)  He was mainly interested in photography, and since Justin had taken him to all the Hidalgo County hotspots already (and these days “hotspots” had a double meaning L), we convinced him that a trip to Cameron County was in order!  So we made plans to meet Monday morning and head out.

Jack was like me in the sense that, when on a road trip, the car is packed to the gills and you know where everything is, so he preferred to drive, and since he had a Subaru Outback, I knew it could handle Old Port Isabel Road (OPIR) and the Flats out on South Padre, so off we went!  After a stop for tacos and another for a potty break and coffee, we hit the south end of OPIR and immediately bagged the White-tailed Hawk on a pole!  (He and Justin had seen one on Brushline, but the light was horrible for photography…)  This one (and his mate) were in a much better position for portraits!  A little further down the road we would see a young Whitetail bracketed by two Turkey Vultures, and a Mockingbird giving him fits!

White-tailed Hawk gives us the looking-over and then flies over to her mate!

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A youngster peers our way while a Mockingbird hassles him off-camera...

We stopped at the first hacking station with nary a falcon in sight, but we did see a Long-billed Curlew and have a pair of Gull-billed Terns fly over.  Crawling along we had a lot of typical dry brush birds as heard-onlies, like White-eyed Vireo, Cactus and Bewick’s Wrens, and Olive and Lark Sparrows, but a Curve-billed Thrasher and Verdin allowed only fleeting views, while a beat-up Mockingbird came right out!  Several Cassin’s Sparrows were singing, and one finally posed for Jack’s camera.  It may have been that stop when suddenly the Aplomado Falcon went shooting by, but he was against the sun and wasn’t stopping, but was going the direction of another hacking station that I didn’t even know was out there!  Near the “chicken coops” I couldn’t believe I spotted a nighthawk snoozing on a mesquite branch, and when his mate flushed (that we didn’t know was in another tree) the position of the white bar nailed him as a Common.  At the canal we had a cooperative Botteri’s Sparrow sitting up and singing, and two Black-bellied Whistling Ducks posed with a Snowy Egret.  Meadowlarks were quite plentiful, and one of the many Bobwhites we were hearing sat up for Jack!

Jack scans for falcons along Old Port Isabel Road

We spot a Common Nighthawk in a mesquite (who also spots us)! 

A cute little Botteri's Sparrow sings away!

From there we headed over to the Island and the Flats, which were in pretty good shape (but he admitted that had I not told him that the ground was solid under the “ponds”, he would have been leery of going out there himself).  As promised, we were able to drive right up to Laughing Gulls, Sandwich and Royal Terns (was looking for an Elegant as they had been reported from North Padre Island), Black Skimmers, and various shorebirds including Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings, dowitchers, godwits, and best of all, all four “little” plovers, including Piping Plovers that were still in breeding finery!  We enjoyed dancing Reddish Egrets and diving Brown Pelicans, and even the Neotropic Cormorants put on a show.  An immature Tricolored Heron was quite impressive with his rusty margins!

Immature Tricolored Heron

Piping (left) and Semipalmated Plovers

Piping Plover looking cute...

Western Sandpipers

Snowy Plover

Black Skimmer

Neotropic Cormorant

From there we headed to the Convention Centre where I bragged about how great the place was in spring migration (an incentive to come back then J), then headed out onto the boardwalks where we honestly didn’t see much except for a Pied-billed Grebe out at the end (and heard the Clapper Rails).  So we headed over to the Nature Center which was much birdier (and much more crowded with families, we were surprised to see):  an Osprey posed right away, and the Mottled Ducks were where they always are.  Comedy relief was supplied by a guy with a long net trying to fish someone’s hat out of the drink! J  Around the corner we had several Common Gallinules, White Ibis, egrets, herons, and even a Least Bittern whizzed by a couple of times, but Jack was invariably shooting something else when she did! L  The “common pond” (which you can also see from the Convention Centre but the light is better from the Nature Center boardwalk) had the usual spoonbills, a white morph Reddish Egret, and a couple of lone shorebirds like Stilt Sandpiper and Lesser Yellowlegs.  All the families were of course looking for Alligators (of which we saw none), but we did see lots of Blue Crabs!  Back at the parking lot the decorative pond there had three juvenile Black-necked Stilts, and a momma Mottled Duck with her brood of darling fluffy babies under the tree (and she was studiously watching us until the grackle got too close J)!

Jack shooting a Common Gallinule (below)

Black-bellied Whistling Duck

A Green Heron changes positions several times within his little patch of vegetation!

 

Juvenile Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Stilt Sandpiper

White morph Reddish Egret

Young Roseate Spoonbill

Lesser Yellowlegs

Juvenile Black-necked Stilt (also below)

Momma Mottled Duck goes on the alert when a grackle comes too close to her brood!

We made a quick visit to the Gulf side just so Jack could wade in the surf (like everyone else was doing) and then called it a day – it was pretty hot out there, but we still managed 83 species! 

Enjoying the surf at South Padre!

Bird list:

  Black-bellied Whistling-Duck         

  Mottled Duck                         
  Northern Bobwhite                     
  Pied-billed Grebe                    
  Neotropic Cormorant                  
  Brown Pelican                        
  Least Bittern                        
  Great Blue Heron                     
  Great Egret                           
  Snowy Egret                          
  Tricolored Heron                     
  Reddish Egret                        
  Green Heron                          
  Yellow-crowned Night-Heron           
  White Ibis                           
  Roseate Spoonbill                    
  Turkey Vulture                       
  Osprey                               
  Harris's Hawk                        
  White-tailed Hawk                    
  Clapper Rail                         
  Common Gallinule                     
  American Coot                        
  Black-necked Stilt                   
  Black-bellied Plover                 
  Snowy Plover                         
  Wilson's Plover                      
  Semipalmated Plover                  
  Piping Plover                        
  Killdeer                             
  Greater Yellowlegs                   
  Willet                               
  Lesser Yellowlegs                    
  Long-billed Curlew                   
  Marbled Godwit                       
  Ruddy Turnstone                      
  Stilt Sandpiper                      
  Sanderling                           
  Least Sandpiper                      
  Western Sandpiper                     
  Short-billed Dowitcher               
  Laughing Gull                        
  Least Tern                           
  Gull-billed Tern                     
  Forster's Tern                       
  Royal Tern                           
  Sandwich Tern                        
  Black Skimmer                        
  Rock Pigeon                          
  Eurasian Collared-Dove               
  White-winged Dove                    
  Mourning Dove                        
  Common Nighthawk                     
  Golden-fronted Woodpecker            
  Crested Caracara                     
  Aplomado Falcon                      
  Brown-crested Flycatcher             
  Great Kiskadee                       
  Tropical Kingbird                    
  Couch's Kingbird                     
  Loggerhead Shrike                    
  White-eyed Vireo                     
  Purple Martin                        
  Barn Swallow                         
  Cliff Swallow                         
  Verdin                               
  Bewick's Wren                        
  Cactus Wren                          
  Curve-billed Thrasher                
  Northern Mockingbird                 
  European Starling                     
  Olive Sparrow                        
  Botteri's Sparrow                    
  Cassin's Sparrow                     
  Lark Sparrow                         
  Northern Cardinal                    
  Blue Grosbeak                        
  Red-winged Blackbird                 
  Eastern Meadowlark                   
  Great-tailed Grackle                 
  Bronzed Cowbird                      
  Orchard Oriole                       
  House Sparrow                        

83 SPECIES