This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Elliotte Rusty Harold.
Original Post: #529-#531 in Corpus Christi
Feed Title: Mokka mit Schlag
Feed URL: http://www.elharo.com/blog/feed/atom/?
Feed Description: Ranting and Raving
Sunday I took an early morning photography class at Paradise Pond, and then left for the airport to catch 6:00 PM flight. Of course this left about eight hours to kill in between, and I planned to use it visiting some more inland hotspots. I mostly followed the route outlined in Cooksey and Weeks’ Birder’s Guide to the Texas Coast, starting from Oso Creek Park.
Oso Creek Park turned out to be too windy for birds on Sunday. It was pretty much a bust aside from a single Loggerhead Shrike. The next stop, Bill Witt City Park, did turn up a dozen or so Long-billed Curlews feeding on the ball fields, just as the guide promised. The South Texas Botanic Gardens were much more fun, and I spent a good couple of hours roaming the grounds. I only added one species to my Texas list there, Black-necked Stilt. Frustratingly I heard at least two possible life birds singing/calling very unfamiliar songs, but I couldn’t find them or ID them despite extensive searching. :-(
After the Botanic Gardens, I followed a route that took me to some unlikely local hotspots in industrial areas and small local parks. Among other birds, I added Least Sandpiper, Stilt Sandpiper, and American Avocet to the trip list.
However the real jewel was the final stop at a small park at the Hilltop Community Center. I don’t know why this is such a hot spot, but it was just popping with new and interesting birds. There were several I hadn’t found earlier on the trip including Ruby-crowned Kinglet and White-winged Dove. The area wasn’t that great–just about 30 acres–but the foliage was very dense with lots of cover, no open fields, so you had to walk all the trails. The first “lifer” I found was a surprised Javelina (Pecari tajacu), a local native wild pig. It ran off before I could get a good shot.
However the first life bird was a Couch’s Kingbird, a kind of flycatcher and one of my target species for the trip:
I may have seen one earlier at Lake Findley on the first day, but that one was too far away to be sure. This one was much more cooperative, and gave me plenty of time to shoot it from all angles, and carefully check the field marks against my Sibley Field Guide to make sure it wasn’t the very similar (but much rarer) Tropical Kingbird.
I continued to zigzag slowly through the trails. Toward 1:00 I was thinking about starting to the airport but decided to explore one last loop trail I hadn’t yet followed, and a good thing I did because as I was walking down it I heard a really loud racous jay-like call, and then a big Woodpeckerish bird flew over. #530 Great Kiskadee! Another target bird for the trip.
Not a great photo, but given that it didn’t perch anywhere I could see, I’m lucky to have gotten it.
But that wasn’t it. At one small corner I saw a lot of activity. I was tracking down an unusual sparrow that turned out to be a my first Lincoln’s Sparrow for the tip, when a thrasher popped up. At first I thought this was a Brown Thrasher, but after looking at the photographs–in particular the grayish cheek, dark bill, and distinctly white breast–I’m now calling it #531, the very similar Long-billed Thrasher:
The biggest differentiating characteristic here is the facial pattern. In good light, you can distinguish these species by color–the Brown Thrasher is much more rufous. However I didn’t have good light. This bird was deeply in the shade, and when developing the raw image it’s very easy to make the bird more or less rufous.
I left Hilltop about 2:00, grabbed some lunch, filled up the tank, and returned the rental car. Unfortunately when I got to the airport, I discovered my flight had been canceled, and I wasn’t leaving till the next morning. If I had known that in advance I could have spent a few more hours in the field. I thought about going back to Hertz to see if I could get my car back, but by the time I got back to Hilltop I would have only had about another hour of daylight left so I just took the shuttle to the hotel.
Total species count for the entire 5-day trip was 112 including 12 life birds:
House Sparrow
Couch’s Kingbird
White-throated Sparrow
Great Kiskadee
Lincoln’s Sparrow
Swan Goose
American Avocet
Stilt Sandpiper
Sanderling
Black-necked Stilt
Common Ground-Dove
Black-bellied Plover
Long-billed Dowitcher
Semipalmated Plover
Ruddy Duck
Least Sandpiper
Horned Lark
Ruddy Turnstone
Common Grackle
Black-crested Titmouse
Vermilion Flycatcher
Carolina Wren
Tree Swallow
American Pipit
American Goldfinch
Savannah Sparrow
Bald Eagle
Sandhill Crane
White-eyed Vireo
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Wilson’s Snipe
Orange-crowned Warbler
Red-shouldered Hawk
Red-winged Blackbird
Mallard
Common Moorhen
Cinnamon Teal
Pied-billed Grebe
Northern Harrier
Lesser Yellowlegs
Belted Kingfisher
Mottled Duck
Rock Pigeon
American Kestrel
American Oystercatcher
American White Pelican
Black Vulture
Bonaparte’s Gull
Boat-tailed Grackle
Brown Pelican
Bufflehead
Caspian Tern
Common Goldeneye
Double-crested Cormorant
Forster’s Tern
Gadwall
Greater Yellowlegs
Herring Gull
Killdeer
Lesser Scaup
Little Blue Heron
Long-billed Curlew
Neotropic Cormorant
Northern Pintail
Osprey
Red-breasted Merganser
Reddish Egret
Red-tailed Hawk
Ring-billed Gull
Royal Tern
Sandwich Tern
Snowy Egret
Tricolored Heron
White-faced Ibis
White Ibis
Whooping Crane
White-tailed Hawk
Willet
Redhead
Green-winged Teal
American Coot
Northern Shoveler
Great Egret
Blue-winged Teal
Black-crowned Night-Heron
White-winged Dove
Roseate Spoonbill
Laughing Gull
Great-tailed Grackle
Great Blue Heron
European Starling
Eastern Phoebe
Loggerhead Shrike
Brown Thrasher
Long-billed Thrasher
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Cooper’s Hawk
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Brown-headed Cowbird
Northern Mockingbird
Mourning Dove
Audubon’s Oriole
Crested Caracara
Curve-billed Thrasher
Eastern Meadowlark
Pyrrhuloxia
Bronzed Cowbird
White-crowned Sparrow
Turkey Vulture
Green Jay
Northern Cardinal
I was hoping for more like 150 species with 20-30 life birds and I missed several I wanted. I guess I’ll just have to go back to Texas again. There are a couple of good festivals coming up in April, including Galveston Featherfest and Wings Over the Hills. However the next one I’m likely to attend is the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in Harlingen in November. Just maybe I can break 200 species in Texas this year.