Barbara,
whom I had taken out in December to help clean up her Texas year list, had
cottoned me onto eBird’s “Year Needs Alerts” (which is what she used to plan
her strategy), so that got my chase juices going seeing as we’ve had so many
rarities in the Valley lately! Cameron
County had the most at the moment, so my friend Pat Heirs joined me as she was
also interested in some of the targets.
Although
the Spotted Towhee and Cackling Goose hadn’t been reported during the last
week, we decided to give Cannon Road/Adams Garden Reservoir a shot. We went in by the north end where it was
still quite foggy, only to discover that you can no longer drive up onto the
reservoir dike! We ended up parking at the
south side and walking up, where there were a few White Pelicans, and several
scattered cormorants and Shovelers, but no goose flocks. However, we soon heard distant Snow Geese,
and before long they were coming out of the haze right towards us, hundreds and
hundreds of them! A couple were small
enough to comfortably call Ross’ (another target for the year), but the
Cackling had been hanging out with some White-fronted Geese, and they were
nowhere to be found… So we crawled down
Cannon, stopping and listening every so often; no towhee, but we added several
Valley specialties for the day (it was kinda fun hearing a Carolina Wren out
one side of the window and a Bewick’s out the other – normally they prefer very
different habitats), plus a White-tailed Kite!
Once
at US 281 we decided to bypass Resaca de la Palma and the reported Tropical
Parula, and go straight to UTRGV Brownsville for the Black Hawk (as that would
be a state bird for me and a county bird for Pat) and the Greater Scaup. I had only been to this area a couple of
times, so when we saw a footbridge we pulled into this big open parking area
and headed over! We ran into another
couple who didn’t think we were on the right bridge, but in the meantime we
enjoyed several feral Muscovies and a few herons. Others had told me that they had parked at
the bookstore, so we headed over that way and discovered that there was another footbridge, and that’s where the
hawk was (thankfully we spotted some other folks already enjoying the
bird)! He put on a great show, hopping
from branch to branch, and Pat had fun doing a Donald Duck impersonation to one
couple’s little girl! J
The place was quite birdy, with two Green Kingfishers close by and the
other two species vocalizing unseen, both kinds of grebes, a snoozing Anhinga, the
resident Black Phoebe, singing House Finches (one of the expected spots in the
Valley for them), and a big flock of Red-crowned Parrots that flew overhead a
couple of times! Pat spotted the scaup
pair on the far side; at first I was uncomfortable calling it a Greater as I
thought I was seeing a hump (they were snoozing), but as they turned circles as
they floated I eventually got a flat-headed look.
Pat checks the Resaca from the footbridge
Black Phoebe
The lost Common Black Hawk
Greater Scaup
We
headed back to the car and then stopped at Subway to grab a sandwich, then
headed over to Boca Chica. Pat had
mentioned the Monk Parakeets that had been seen at a mobile home park, so since
that was also a county bird for her (and for me, too, actually), we swung in,
but didn’t hear the birds until we had gone full circle and were actually
outside the park when we got our best views!
They were definitely nest building in the palm, so it looked like a new
colony was forming!
Monk Parakeets working on their nest
I
knew the Boca Chica targets (Whimbrel, Red Knot, Gannet, and Lesser
Black-backed Gull) were probably all longshots, but we dead-headed (to use
Pat’s term J) to the beach, picking up a flyover flock
of Sandhill Cranes on the way. We didn’t
get far anyway due to the incoming tide and roiling waves; what gulls we did see were just Laughing and
Ring-billed, and the fog was too thick to scan for Gannets, so we headed back
and stopped at the big shorebird mob we had seen on the way down. They were waaay
out there, and most of them were unidentifiable, but we managed to add a few
species for the day, including a white morph Reddish Egret, several Pintail, and
a pale-headed first-year Herring Gull that had us giving it a second and third
look! A few Horned Larks shot across the
road, and we didn’t spot any Aplomados, but we really didn’t look super hard as
we were on a time schedule!
Next
stop was Laguna Vista Nature Park, as Zone-tailed Hawk (while not reported
recently) would have been another county bird for Pat and a year bird for me,
so we got an exercise walk in at the cute little park (and picked up a
Buff-bellied Hummer at one of the water features), but that was about it. On to Laguna Atascosa, where a very dark
immature White-tailed Hawk soaring over Buena Vista Road has us going! At the visitor’s center the rangers told us
that the Blue Bunting had been reported (last week) along the picnic area
parking lot. (I also teased the guy
mercilessly because he said the new Bayside Drive was going to be finished late
spring/early summer – they’ve been saying that for years, but he said that this
time it was the real deal!) The female
ranger had seen their Tropical Parula
that morning, so we made a loop around Kiskadee Trail looking for the feeding
flock. What we did find was their wintering Rose-breasted Grosbeak – not a target
as we knew they’d be coming through in droves before long, but it’s always nice
to get a rarity! We enjoyed Green Jays
and Cardinals at the gazebo feeders, but a stroll along the edge of the parking
area yielded no bunting (I really didn’t expect it to…). So after falling off the wagon and purchasing
a Diet Coke J we headed over to Osprey Overlook to look
for the reported Eared Grebe.
Young male Rose-breasted Grosbeak
The
lighting was actually pretty good, but most of the stuff was way out there and
the heat waves were pretty bad. The
dominant water bird was Coots, Coots, and more Coots, with a few Pied-billed
Grebes thrown in. So giving up on that
(my “get ready to go home alarm” had gone off) we headed out General Brant
Road, as American Bittern and Grasshopper Sparrow had been reported along the
Prairie Trail. I probably should have
called Tamie, my friend who made the report, because that hotspot also stands
for the overlook of the marsh, and I had no idea whether they had actually
hiked the trail. At any rate, we weren’t gonna hike the trail in that
heat (plus, we had to get going), but a perusal of the marsh from the road just
added Common Gallinule and a crying Sora.
We even missed the Alligator that some locals found!
We
called it a day after that, with a respectable 89 species! Bird list:
Snow
Goose
Ross's
Goose Muscovy Duck (Domestic type)
Northern Shoveler
Mottled Duck
Northern Pintail
Greater Scaup
Lesser Scaup
Least Grebe
Pied-billed Grebe
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Mourning Dove
Buff-bellied Hummingbird
Sora
Common Gallinule
American Coot
Sandhill Crane
Black-bellied Plover
Killdeer
Short-billed Dowitcher
Willet
Laughing Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Caspian Tern
Forster's Tern
Anhinga
Neotropic Cormorant
Double-crested Cormorant
American White Pelican
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Little Blue Heron
Tricolored Heron
Reddish Egret
Cattle Egret
White Ibis
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
White-tailed Kite
Northern Harrier
Common Black Hawk
Harris's Hawk
White-tailed Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Ringed Kingfisher
Belted Kingfisher
Green Kingfisher
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Crested Caracara
American Kestrel
Monk Parakeet
Red-crowned Parrot
Black Phoebe
Eastern Phoebe
Great Kiskadee
Tropical Kingbird
Couch's Kingbird
Loggerhead Shrike
White-eyed Vireo
Green Jay
Horned Lark
Black-crested Titmouse
Verdin
House Wren
Carolina Wren
Bewick's Wren
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Curve-billed Thrasher
Long-billed Thrasher
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
House Finch
Olive Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Lincoln's Sparrow
Eastern Meadowlark
Red-winged Blackbird
Great-tailed Grackle
Orange-crowned Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Northern Cardinal
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
House Sparrow
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