Friday I signed up for a relatively leisurely (six hours, one location) trip to the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, once again along the border. At the first feeders, we spent about 45 minutes watching Plain Chachalcas, Green Jays, Orange-crowned Warblers, Red-winged Blackbirds, a Long-billed Thrasher or two, and several Altamira Orioles, #793, a bird I had missed a few times on Wednesday:
Today I signed up for a special trip with Jon Dunn. Jon’s a great birder and a fun guy (and also co-author of the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds) but we did visit a strict subset of the sites I had visited the day before with Greg Miller on the Big Day so I didn’t find too many new birds; and only one was a life bird, #792 Painted Bunting. It was a female, and I only saw it for about a second and a half, so no photo.
It was extremely windy today, even more so than yesterday. yesterday the wind only tried to steal my hat. Today it succeeded:
I was going to leave the hat there, but a fellow birder was braver than me and climbed off the boardwalk, into the swamp, ignoring the “Beware of Alligator” signs, to retrieve it. It wasn’t just me either. Jon lost his hat once too.
I also managed to miss, once again, Green-tailed Towhee. Jon and some other group members found it, but I did not. It’s turning into this trip’s nemesis bird.
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Today started the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival. I signed up for the Big Day vans to chase as many species as possible. As big days go this wasn’t the largest–we didn’t start till a little after 6:00 AM and finished around 4:15 PM; but we did rack up about 125 species including nine life birds. I squeezed into a van with Greg Miller of Big Year fame and Matt Denton from BirdQuest.
We left Harlingen around 6:05 AM and headed down Highway 100 to South Padre Island, adding a few hawks along the way. However, the real counting didn’t begin until we got to the South Padre Island Convention Center, where we tallied more than 60 species including my first life bird of the day, #785, Franklin’s Gull. This was a good one. I’d missed it by a few hours in Port Aransas earlier in the year, and I don’t think it was seen at all later in the week.
Next stop was a small patch of protected land in the middle of a residential and hotel area on Sheepshead Road. (LTC 036 on eBird). 16 species here including a rare Pine Siskin. However I missed potential life bird Green-tailed Towhee that Greg Miller spotted. This would become a common theme throughout the week as I repeatedly missed the Green-tailed Towhee at multiple sites.
We left the island around 9:30 and drove back up Highway 100 looking for raptors. We found several including #786, Harris’s Hawk. I didn’t bring my camera with me on the trip, since it slows us down, but here’s a Harris’s Hawk I shot on the last day of the festival:
We also found a not-really-countable Aplomado Falcon. (The species has been reintroduced in Texas after being extirpated around 1951.) However I’d seen that in Panama a few weeks before at El Chirru, so it wasn’t as big a deal for me as for some other participants.
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Details still to come, and a few birds I need to verify, but:
Wednesday I woke up with what I will politely call Torrijos’s Revenge. I should have either A) stayed at the Lodge or B) stuffed up with Imodium but I stupidly did neither. Today’s plan was to drive pretty much as far down the road as we could get in a four-wheel drive, stopping to bird along the way.
At the first stop we added #779, Buff-rumped Warbler, and I was feeling a little queasy.
At the second stop we added #780, Crested Oropendola, and I was looking for a tree.
At the third stop we added #781, Barred Puffbird, #782, Slate-colored Seedeater , and #783, Dusky-faced Tanager; and I was really starting to wish I hadn’t come.
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Tuesday it’s another early morning to drive about an hour and half away to the Pacific Coast for some lowland birds. First stop was a rice farm that attracted a lot of herons and shorebirds.
