Sometimes it’s a good idea to bird the
less-popular areas around the county, as you never know what may know up. Today I wanted to check out the Delta Lake
and Hargill areas, as there are a few out-of-the-way eBird hotspots that I
wanted to explore (most of these “discovered” by our intrepid Dan Jones). In hindsight I probably should have gone to
Hargill first (more on that later), but Nittler Road was closer, and I arrived
there right around sunrise, so decided to start there. This spot was introduced to me by my friend
Pat Heirs, as after a particularly wet season the road was entirely blocked by
a lake, that was nonetheless full of birds (on one visit the place was full of
Black-crowned Night Herons)! On subsequent
visits the “lake” fluctuated, and today it was totally gone, but I still felt
the road was worthy of being surveyed on a regular basis, as it does have a few wet spots along the
length of it, and good things can still show up in the ag fields. Today the best bird of the trip showed up about
a tenth of a mile from the intersection with FM 493: an Upland Sandpiper (at
the tail end of their migration season here) went shooting by at eye level and
landed in the field! Further down the
road a flock of Pectoral Sandpipers flew past and landed in another wet field,
and a Long-billed Thrasher scolded from some vegetation along a canal. Dickcissels seemed to be constantly flying
overhead, and this was the only spot I picked up Black-bellied Whistling Ducks.
Lush habitat at a culvert along Nittler Road
At the end of the road I headed south on FM
88 (Nittler theoretically continues on to FM 1015 but it looked pretty dicey),
made a left on FM 1422, then another left on FM 1015. This whole area can be good for Sandhill
Cranes and geese in late fall and winter, and if there’s water in the ag fields
on 1015, they can be stuffed with shorebirds!
Today it was pretty quiet (too early for the big boys, anyway), so I
continued to the main destination, a little spot known locally as “1015 Pond,”
which, as the grackle flies, is directly east of Delta Lake. This place can be jumping as well (when it
isn’t bone dry; thankfully it wasn’t today), and this morning had a good
selection of shorebirds including a couple of Greater Yellowlegs, Semipalmated
Sandpipers (as best I could tell, anyway), several Killdeer behaving strangely,
and even a Wilson’s Phalarope! A nice
surprise was hearing a metallic pink
and then seeing a male Blue Grosbeak bounce up and away!
1015 Pond
From there continued north on FM 1015
(those limiting their birding to Hidalgo County have to close their eyes, as
you have to invade Willacy County to get to the next stop), left on FM 490, and
then left again on FM 88 to Delta Lake Park.
Before entering the park it’s good to check the lake from the parking
area on the right, but this time there wasn’t much except for Black and Turkey
Vultures circling overhead, as it was still pretty full. Looking forward to checking the trees in the
park after the “pop up” storms of the last week, my hopes were dashed when I
saw a lineup of cars, and then discovered they were having some kind of a youth
race there! (Great for the kids – not so
great for birding… L)
Frankly, I was surprised they didn’t close the whole park except for
those involved in the event, as the kids really needed all the roads (including
that nice back area) to run their race, but as soon as the last kid left said
back area, the sheriff let me in, and I actually had the whole place to myself
except for this ancient vehicle that came bouncing down the fence line, over
the canal (somehow), and gave up coming over to where I was due to all the
police tape that was blocking parts of the road! And there was no bird life to speak of,
either, so I crawled back out with not much to show for it until an Anhinga
soared overhead!
So I headed back up 88 and over to 490 to
check out a couple of Dan’s “hot spots”; unfortunately I totally missed the
eastern CR 2500 Pond and visited the western CR 2500 pond instead, which was
dry as a bone but looked like it had great potential. So from there I headed down to County Line
Road, as another hotspot focuses on a rather large pond north of the road that
I didn’t even know was there! Turning
onto the road a Cooper’s Hawk made off with breakfast as a Caracara flew around
nearby. I was very surprised to hear a White-tipped Dove singing in this mostly-agricultural landscape, but I guess there was just enough thornscrub habitat for his liking! Just before the Big Pond was a
little marsh that, like many other places, was rather quiet but had great potential. Before getting to the Big Pond a male
Vermillion Flycatcher put on a show by sallying out and back from a barbed wire
fence! The pond had some distant
shorebirds that were unidentifiable from where I was, but the whole road (which
is the same road that goes by Hargill Playa) looked worthy of birding as it was
in pretty good shape!
Dry wetland along CR 2500
Wet wetland along County Line Road
Vermilion Flycatcher
That is, until I got to the Playa! L Right now the fence line is horribly
overgrown, so getting a peek into this highly productive area was tough (this
is the spot where the Collared Plover, also found initially by Dan Jones and
then Pat Heirs the next year, showed up two years in a row). Nevertheless, there were plenty of Avocets,
peeps, ducks, and Laughing Gulls out there (along with a couple of Caspian
Terns), but couldn’t pull out a Snowy Plover (especially as, by that time, the
heat waves were intolerable). Getting
back to the road, any sane person wouldn’t have attempted getting past this one
section that was pure mud, but it was close enough to the paved main drag that
I went for it (having another one of those cocky “This-is-a-Subaru-he-can-do-anything”
moments), and was thankful I grew up in Michigan learning to drive in
snow!! After fishtailing a couple of
times we came out the other side unscathed with nothing more than an adrenalin
rush J,
and since I had a little time left, decided to check out south Brushline Road.
Great Kiskadee (above and below)
Hargill Playa is on the left (blocked by foliage at this point), and that brown spot down the road was the adventurous part!
This actually was more productive than many
of the other spots, with a nice adult Red-tailed Hawk posing just before the
turnoff, a family group (I’m assuming) of three sibling White-tailed Hawks,
Pyrrhuloxias and Scissor-tailed Flycatchers chattering by the road, and a very
cooperative Cassin’s Sparrow that popped right up to pishing! At one of the “swamps” along the road where I
stopped, something big was tromping around in the brush, making a lot of
snorting noises, and flushing a bunch of Common Ground Doves in the
process! Whatever it was never showed
itself, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was a wild hog… Other “unique” birds along this stretch
included Roadrunner, Bobwhite, and Green Jay.
Red-tailed Hawk
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (above and below)
Cassin's Sparrow (an out-of-focus branch in the way accounts for his fuzzy face...)
Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
Mottled Duck
Blue-winged Teal
Northern Bobwhite
Neotropic Cormorant
Anhinga
Great Egret
Tricolored Heron
Cattle Egret
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Cooper's Hawk
White-tailed Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Black-necked Stilt
American Avocet
Killdeer
Greater Yellowlegs
Upland Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Pectoral Sandpiper
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Western Sandpiper
Wilson's Phalarope
Laughing Gull
Caspian Tern
Rock Pigeon
Eurasian Collared-Dove
White-winged Dove
Mourning Dove
Inca Dove
Common Ground-Dove
White-tipped Dove
Greater Roadrunner
Buff-bellied Hummingbird
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Crested Caracara
American Kestrel
Vermilion Flycatcher
Great Kiskadee
Couch's Kingbird
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
Loggerhead Shrike
White-eyed Vireo
Green Jay
Horned Lark
Barn Swallow
Verdin
House Wren
Bewick's Wren
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Curve-billed Thrasher
Long-billed Thrasher
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Yellow Warbler
Cassin's Sparrow
Lark Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Pyrrhuloxia
Blue Grosbeak
Dickcissel
Red-winged Blackbird
Great-tailed Grackle
Baltimore Oriole
House Sparrow
67 SPECIES
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