#796 Chihuahuan Raven

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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