Saturday, I took another leisurely (only six hours) trip south to the border. The attraction this time was access to the Nature Conservancy’s Southmost Preserve, a site not normally open to the public. This is next door to Sabal Palms and shares a lot of the fauna with that site. However we did get several new species for the trip, mostly as flyovers including Snow Goose, Ross’s Goose, Greater White-fronted Goose (which I initially mistook as a life bird–I don’t know why I never remember that I’ve seen this one before. I’ve tallied it as a lifer multiple times in multiple states. Somehow it’s just really forgettable.) and #796 Chihuahuan Raven.
I wad the 50mm lens on my camera when the flock flew over (I was practicing digiscoping) so no pictures. Basically it looks like a crow, or a raven; but there are no other crows or ravens around here so a flock of 24 large black birds bigger than Grackles pretty much has to be Chihuahuan Raven, though if one were side-by-side with a Common Raven I’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart.
Other species at the site included, in taxonomic order:
Greater White-fronted Goose
Snow Goose
Ross’s Goose
Gadwall
Mottled Duck
Blue-winged Teal
Northern Shoveler
Neotropic Cormorant
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Snowy Egret
Black-crowned Night-Heron
Roseate Spoonbill
Turkey Vulture
White-tailed Kite
Northern Harrier
Red-shouldered Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
American Kestrel
American Coot
Killdeer
Black-necked Stilt
American Avocet
Solitary Sandpiper
Greater Yellowlegs
Western Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Dunlin
Long-billed Dowitcher
Wilson’s Snipe
Forster’s Tern
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Inca Dove
Common Ground-Dove
White-tipped Dove
Buff-bellied Hummingbird
Belted Kingfisher
Green Kingfisher
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Eastern Phoebe
Great Kiskadee
Couch’s Kingbird
Green Jay
Chihuahuan Raven
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Tree Swallow
Carolina Wren
House Wren
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Eastern Bluebird
Northern Mockingbird
Long-billed Thrasher
Northern Waterthrush
Orange-crowned Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Wilson’s Warbler
Clay-colored Sparrow
Field Sparrow
Vesper Sparrow
Lark Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Lincoln’s Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Summer Tanager
Northern Cardinal
Pyrrhuloxia
Dickcissel
Red-winged Blackbird
Yellow-headed Blackbird
Great-tailed Grackle
Besides the Chihuahuan Ravens, 111 of these were state birds for Texas. White-tipped Dove was also an ABA area bird, although I had seen it previously in Panama.
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