1/6/22
Return guest Kay from San Antonio has become more of a friend than a client J, and all she wanted to do for a day was build up her county lists (and hopefully bag a few lifers along the way)! Yes, she has been bit by the “200 species in 200 counties” bug J, so the focus today was on Cameron and Hidalgo Counties.
But the #1 priority was the Bat Falcon! She had swung by Santa Ana after arriving and stayed till sunset with no sightings (and there had been no reports that day), so I was a little concerned that he might not be as easy to get as he’s been. Plus, when we left this morning, it was pea soup outside, and we almost decided to go straight to Brownsville for the Social Flycatcher, but then decided to go ahead and go for the falcon.
The crowd waiting at the entrance wasn’t as big as when my friend Marsha and I went on Tuesday, but that was also the day the bird decided to land on the radio tower near the visitor’s center and not the power pole outside the entrance (you never saw people scramble so fast once the word went out J)! So since Kay had mobility issues, I suggested she stay by the car in the lot and keep an eye on the tower, and I’d walk out front and keep an eye on the pole, and we’d text each other if the bird showed. It wasn’t too long after that when the little guy came blasting in from the west and took his place, “bowing” before his audience with that cute head bobbing motion! Word went out immediately, and I texted Kay, so she drove up and was able to get a foggy but identifiable look of the little ham! J
So from there we headed straight to the UTRGV
campus in Brownsville, where I dropped Kay off at the land bridge and went to
park in the bookstore parking lot, where for a quarter you can park for 30
minutes at a time! Checked the whistling
duck mob real quick (which had a White Ibis in with them), and then caught up
to her and another birder named Keith, where we actually found quite a few
things: trumpeting Least Grebes,
Anhingas drying their wings, an excited Blue-headed Vireo (another lifer for
her), a Chachalaca for her Cameron County list, Tropical Kingbirds, a pair of
House Finches (now no longer “flaggable” anywhere in the Valley), and even a
female Summer Tanager that showed off!
An Altamira Oriole called, but she missed that one… L Wilson’s Warblers “chepped”, and a Laughing
Gull flew over, but what also flew over and then proceeded to call from the
opposite side of the resaca was a Gray Hawk, another county bird! An Archilochus hummingbird landed and preened, giving us a good enough look at her
outer primary to confirm her as a Ruby-throated (which is more likely that far
east anyway)!
Kay and Keith looking for the Social Flycatcher
I had to run back and put another quarter in the
meter, and upon walking back I saw Kay closer to University, where she thought
she had the Social! It was quite distant
so I couldn’t really tell, but upon closer inspection turned out to be just
another Kiskadee… We ran into my friend
Tamie and Father Tom (plus a bunch of other folks who had arrived in the
meantime), who had what we think was a Red-shouldered Hawk with the brief view we
had. Kay was ready to head on, but we
checked for the Black Phoebe she had seen earlier (since it was flaggable, I
felt I really couldn’t include it in the eBird list unless I had seen it, which
I didn’t, but she got a photo which she’ll add to the “seen only by you” list),
and got a Yellow-rumped Warbler instead.
Fulvous Whistling Duck had been reported, so before leaving we scoured
the mob of Blackbellies and miraculously found one Fulvous in the mix! Several Yellow-throated Warblers chirped from
the palms but didn’t wanna show themselves; one finally flew so Kay could count
it for her Cameron list!
Black-bellied Whistling Duck
When Kay discovered that she had surpassed 200 species for Cameron, we opted to skip the rest of the Cameron County spots and concentrate on Hidalgo. I had this whole complicated itinerary set up, but we ended up throwing that to the wind and concentrating on wetlands, as her primary gaps included ducks and shorebirds. But before reaching the Hidalgo County line we did manage to log several things for Cameron County, including a Northern Harrier, both Red-tailed and Harris’ Hawks, and a small group of Green Parakeets!
After we crossed the line a stop at the El Zacatal
resacas added Ring-necked and Ruddy Ducks, Green Herons, White-tailed Kite, and
Pied-billed Grebe to the day list, and in the sod farms along 281 a handful of
Long-billed Curlews fed. A
seat-of-the-pants swing through the Progresso Silos surprisingly yielded no
Yellow-headed Blackbirds, but we did get plenty of cowbirds of both types, plus the requisite Red-winged
Blackbirds. From there we stopped for
lunch, but instead of going back to Estero, she sounded intrigued by some of
these possible shorebird magnets north of the freeway, so we headed that
direction.
El Zacatal Resaca
Long-billed Curlews
First stop was Valley Acres Reservoir, where the
water was too high for many shorebirds, but we managed to flush several
Black-crowned Night Herons as we crested the levee! The central island had a few Avocets, plus tons of
White Pelicans and Neotropic Cormorants, and a string of Lesser Scaup was out
in the middle of the lake. A lone
Forster’s Tern sat near some pelicans, while a pair of Ospreys flew by just as
we were leaving. Continuing north to
Sugarhouse Pond, Kay decided the incline was too steep for her (and there wasn’t
anything in there anyway), but as we continued north we hit the jackpot with
five White-tailed Hawks circling overhead amongst the Turkey Vultures, plus a
surprise Peregrine Falcon!
The island in the middle of Valley Acres Reservoir
Our next goal was the goose flock at Rio Beef Feedyards, so we headed over there, picking up some Blue-winged Teal, a Sora, and a Bewick’s Wren along Rio Beef Road. A Pyrrhuloxia on the road just before the turnoff to the feedyards was nice! Procuring permission to enter, we picked up the requisite Brewer’s Blackbirds right away (along with all the other icterids), but alas the Snow Goose flock was way out in the water (instead of right next to the road where they were last time, along with the Ross’), and the heat waves and barking dogs precluded us from getting the scope out to check the gob of shorebirds in the north pond! We could pick out lots of Shovelers, a few Avocets, a Black-necked Stilt or two, and I at least heard Least Sandpipers, but the others were just too far away (I suspected dowitchers and Stilt Sandpipers, but I just couldn’t tell). A Caracara sat fairly hidden on the ground as well.
From there we headed over to Brushline Road, not
adding much else except Harris’ Hawks.
South of SR 186 things picked up a little, with close to 100 Long-billed
Curlews in the wetland just south of 186, plus a couple of Greater Yellowlegs. Another pond down the road yielded
Green-winged Teal, Pintail, and Mottled Ducks, and picked up more dickeys
including Savannah Sparrow, Loggerhead Shrike, and Western Meadowlark. We also saw several fields of something wrapped in plastic; our guess was tender new citrus plants (especially since they all were killed by last year's freeze), but we weren't sure...
Once on FM 490 we headed on home (where we added a
singing Curve-billed Thrasher in front of the Suites) with a hefty 86 species
for the day! Bird list:
Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
Fulvous Whistling-Duck
Snow Goose
Blue-winged Teal
Northern Shoveler
Mottled Duck
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Ring-necked Duck
Lesser Scaup
Ruddy Duck
Plain Chachalaca
Least Grebe
Pied-billed Grebe
Rock Pigeon
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Mourning Dove
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Sora
Common Gallinule
American Coot
Black-necked Stilt
American Avocet
Killdeer
Long-billed Curlew
Least Sandpiper
Greater Yellowlegs
Laughing Gull
Forster's Tern
Anhinga
Double-crested Cormorant
Neotropic Cormorant
American White Pelican
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Green Heron
Black-crowned Night-Heron
White Ibis
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
White-tailed Kite
Northern Harrier
Harris's Hawk
White-tailed Hawk
Gray Hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Crested Caracara
American Kestrel
Bat Falcon
Peregrine Falcon
Green Parakeet
Eastern Phoebe
Great Kiskadee
Tropical Kingbird
Blue-headed Vireo
Loggerhead Shrike
Green Jay
Black-crested Titmouse
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Carolina Wren
Bewick's Wren
European Starling
Curve-billed Thrasher
Long-billed Thrasher
Northern Mockingbird
House Sparrow
House Finch
Savannah Sparrow
Western Meadowlark
Altamira Oriole
Red-winged Blackbird
Bronzed Cowbird
Brown-headed Cowbird
Brewer's Blackbird
Great-tailed Grackle
Orange-crowned Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Yellow-throated Warbler
Wilson's Warbler
Summer Tanager
Northern Cardinal
Pyrrhuloxia
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