Final Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival Post

Really, it is. I swear. At least for this year.

Banding was slow today at Carpenter Nature Center and I spent the morning talking to the Development Director while she repaired nets. Fortunately, I had a chance to observe some banding while at the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival. Once again, a Sunday morning trip was scheduled to watch bander Mark Conway (that's Mark in the above photo banding a kiskadee) and his assistants band birds at Los Ebanos Preserve.

Here's a closer shot of the kiskadee Mark was banding. Something interesting that I learned was that all kiskadees have a yellow gape.

I took a photo of one earlier in the festival and I had never noticed that before and thought it was a young bird, but all kiskadees of all ages have that yellow outline at the corners of their mouths.

The first bird of the morning wast a gray phase eastern screech owl. The banders weren't targeting owls, but they had the nets up at not long after dawn and this bird was just flying through and flew into the net.

Here is a long-billed thrasher which I hear way more than see in when birding in South Texas. That bill is not deformed, that's the way they are.

The best part of the day was getting to see a green jay up close. Last year they banded quite a few and I figured that green jays were par for the course.

But Mark said that they don't get green jays in the nets very often as they are members of the corvid family and very intelligent. They had not banded at Los Ebanos recently so the birds were just not used to it.

Mark said that this set a record for the most green jays that they have ever caught in a day: 9 green jays banded--and I never got tired of them.

Another exciting bird of the day was an olive sparrow--one of the hardest birds to see, you hear them quite a bit. I was glad to have a chance to get this photo because, frankly, my earlier efforts were just plain sad:

Behind all those tiny branches lurks an olive sparrow at Llano Grande. This was not bad, just finding an olive sparrow sitting on a branch long enough to aim your scope and camera is feat within itself.

Here, Mark is holding an orange-crowned warbler. These guys are all over in the trees in south Texas this time of year. They're not an easy warbler to see, so when a guide finds one, I think people hear warbler and hope for an exciting/colorful bird. As they search and search, they'll say, "I see a small brownish bird..." Yep, that's the orange-crowned. It's not even as orange as a blackburnian warbler. You may be wondering to yourself, why this bird is called an orange-crowned warbler...

Here, Mark demonstrates the name. When you hold and orange-crowned warbler about six inches from your face and blow on its crown, you can see a kind of orangish color on the underside of the crest feathers--see how obvious that is? Another one of those birds that was named when bird watching was done with a gun, not with binoculars.

Here are one of the many great-tailed grackles in the area. When you get them in the sun, they really are a striking bird. You can hear great-taileds singing all over Harlingen, any time of day--even all night long when they are roosting in the trees--how do those guys get any rest?

They do sound incredibly mechanical as opposed to musical. I wonder how that adaptation sounded, and what must have early explorers to North America have thought hearing those things chatter all night in the trees above them?

There was also a very exciting bird into the nets--a common yellowthroat, which to Mark are not common but something to study in depth. He thinks that there is an isolated population of yellowthroats that could be a subspecies that he calls the Brownsville yellowthroat. Will there a split some day separating this species of yellowthroat from the rest of the common yellowthroats seen around the United States? If so, Mark will have been instrumental in that research.

Okay, this doesn't have too much to do with banding, but there were quite a few anoles running around during the banding program and this guy with the wavy tail caught my eye. I wondered what happened to make it look like that? Did appear to slow it down in its daily travels.

And so, I leave you wit one final green jay photo, because they are just so darn cool looking. I'm very excited, it looks like we will be able to go out with Mark one day on the South Texas trip next year, which would be awesome for the group and great for me to learn different banding techniques from different people.

Estero Llano Grande State Park

And yet more Texas birding goodness. Incidentally, if you have been reading these entries and thinking, "Dude, I so have to get my birding butt to south Texas!" I have been in contact with a friend of Non Birding Bill's who runs a travel agency and we are putting together a trip for next October...

I had so much fun on my field trip to Estero Llano Grande State Park on my first day of the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival, I thought I would go back and do some proper digiscoping before I had to work the birdJam booth on Saturday morning. It really is a cool park--it's new and I think over time will gain in popularity.

I wanted a chance to see and digiscope the black-bellied whistling duck without the fog. These guys were all over the park and they kind of whistle and their bellies are black--boy ornithologists must have been having a bad day--a bird that actually fits its name. Shocking.

The park isn't all wetlands. The path to the visitor center is quite lush and great for watching butterflies. Please don't ask me what kind--I do know lots of people were freaking out because some rare butterfly had been spotted but I can't remember the name. I'm taking baby steps towards butterfly id--I mean, I ranch caterpillars but I don't drop everything to see a hairstreak. I am kinda getting more into it...I must admit that I did pick up one or two butterfly id guides. Man, butterflies have much better names than birds: Shasta Blue, Frigga Fritillary (say THAT 5 times fast), Dull Firetip (kind of an oxymoron name), Definite Patch, Confused Cloudywing--seriously, those are all butterfly names. Ornithologists, if you discover any more birds on this planet, please take note of butterfly names and come up with something creative.

The area also had some hummingbirds. I will mark off a few points from the park for not having their bird feeders filled. Guys, what were you thinking? It's a bird festival weekend, plus you have your own programs going on, how can you not have your bird feeders filled? For a new park, this is not a good first impression--empty feeders on a busy weekend? If you're trying to attract regular birder traffic, that's not the way to do it. I know some of us left feed back on that, so hopefully after the park is open awhile they will have a regular schedule to keep their feeders filled. The empty hummer feeders did put the kibosh on my chances of getting a decent buff-bellied hummingbird photo. Believe it or not, there is a female ruby-throated hummingbird in the above shot. Can you see her? No? She's hard to see? You betcha', so I put my camera to the scope:

There she is. She would fly towards the empty hummingbird feeder, test it out and then sit on the thorn, waiting or perhaps hiding from the buff-bellied, it seemed on constant patrol and ready to chase her off if she even thought about approaching a feeder.

Periodically, a buff-bellied hummingbird would show up, but it never landed in a spot that was easy to photograph. This was the best I could do.

The park did have a nice shorebird selection and after my class that I took this summer, I thought I would try my id skills. It was tough because I learned how to id shorebirds for Minnesota and the Dakotas, not Texas. But I had the time, they were fairly close and it was a good idea to practice. Above we have sleeping shorebirds, mostly dowitchers and stilt sandpipers. But time to break 'em all down and see what I can find.

This one is easy enough--a black necked stilt. Can't really mistake it for anything else.

Here's a family group of stilts. Actually, while I was digiscoping these guys, a rail flew past me. It was so fast and I only saw the silhouette, but I'm assuming it was a Virginia rail. Several soras scooted about the reeds too.

Argh! Here is where it would get tough. Okay, there's a dude in the back with light colored legs and it's smaller than the black legged dudes in front--they guy in back has to be a least sandpiper. But what are the other three? They are either western sandpipers or semi-palmateds. There bills didn't look blunt and kind of down curved--are they westerns? I'm thinking that they're westerns.

Fortunately, as I was digiscoping, I found Clay Taylor (digiscoped above). He confirmed that they were in fact westerns--wrong time of year for semi-palms anyway. Incidentally, he was there for the butterflies.

Now, here was an interesting scenario. The bird on the right is a yellowlegs with a broken leg and the other three are dowitchers. Now which yellowlegs and which dowitchers. Lesser yellowlegs are about the same size as either dowitcher, so this would be a lesser yellowlegs. Now, the dowitchers were very vocal and my shorebird instructor said that if they're noisy, they're long-billed dowitchers. Everyone who passed me called them long-billed as well. Plumage-wise, I just can't really tell. If anyone wants to add tips in the comments on your tips for separating dowitchers--please feel free. I'm calling these long-billed dowitchers.

Or maybe I should call them long-billed bullies, because they would go after any bird trying to feed in their vacinity. Note the posture of the bird in the middle of the dowitchers--puffing itself up and stretching its neck to look impressive. The injured yellowlegs was in no position to argue and soon flew off. But the bird in the middle was not finished.

It made a beeline for a stilt sandpiper (on the right). Again, notice the dowitcher craning its neck as it approaches the stilt sandpiper, major intimidation mode.

But then suddenly everybody flew off--even the thug dowitcher (that's his rump in the above photo in mid take off. I looked up and sure enough, there was a Cooper's hawk cruising overhead. The shorebirds formed a tight flock and circled the water noisily. The Coops didn't dive for any of the birds, but continued over the wetlands in search of less suspecting prey.

A few minutes after the hawk passed, an immature lark sparrow popped up to see what was going on. About this time, I needed to head back towards the convention center. I ran into Clay who was still searching out the butterflies. We talked for a few minutes and one of the visitor center staff came out and said that they had observed a bobcat lurking in the vegetation behind us. Who knew? Stuff like that always makes me wonder what I miss. How many owls do I walk under? How many coyotes cross the path behind me? How often has mountain lion considered whether or not I'd be worthwhile prey?

Portrait Of A Lister


Now, this my friends is a hard core bird lister. If you can't see it, you can click on the photo for a larger version. Note that she has a color coded system as well as a pen to check birds off. I was trying to figure it out. Did the pink just denote birds that were heard and the green was birds heard and seen? Or did the pink indicate birds they group saw, but she did not? Anyway, I admired the listing system, not being a hard core bird lister myself. I have no idea how many birds I have seen in North America. I check off a National Geographic Guide but I haven't counted it in awhile.

Speaking of National Geographic, here is a play of how I stuck both feet in my mouth:

We were all sitting down to a final dinner at the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival and I'm catching up with old friends and seated next to WildBird on the Fly who is engaged with and older gentlemen. As the food is winding down and people are leaving the table, I insert myself with WBotF and the gentleman--he's talking about a bird club he started called the Western Field Ornithologists--and we start moving on to other topics including touching on politics and I demonstrated on him a groping handshake that I received from a republican senator and had a good time. Someone came by asking for a book to be signed and I asked WildBird, "So, who's the old guy?"

She laughed and answered, "Um, that's Jon Dunn."

We both started cackling loudly--I know who Jon Dunn is--and have almost all of his books, I just had no clue what he looked. I confessed my ignorance to Jon and we laughed. We ended up on the same flight out of Harlingen and I have to say for someone who co-wrote and in depth gull identification book, he really is a well-rounded and interesting guy and not the big, boring scary scientist type.

More Tales Of Harlingen

If you have not heard about the baby owls using a stuffed owl as a parent, you must check it out at Cute Overload!

I go all the way to south Texas to see things like the Inca Dove above and low and behold there's one hanging out in Two Harbors, MN. Doh! They kinda look like a small mourning dove with highlights. Although, they do fly as though they don't have much control, it' almost as though you can hear a thought bubble in their head, "Yeeeeeeeeeee-ah, how do I control my body?!"

So, I'm going through my photos trying to figure out how to use them in the blog. The Raptor Project was also at Harlingen and I got some shots of the gyrfalcon flying. Right after I got this shot, the gyr swooped down and buzzed the crowd-a thrilling experience. You could feel the wind in its wake as it passed. The bird did not take out any pigeons this time.

Father Tom, the festival president got to hold the falcon for a bit. I tried to get a photo of him with the bird, but you couldn't get him to look up and who could blame him? I'd find it hard to take my eyes of that lovely piece of bird flesh if it were on my fist too.

"Got Pigeon?!"

This is Chris Boswell, the Mayor of Harlingen. It's really incredible to see how the town of Harlingen embraces the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival--the mayor himself came to the opening reception, there were big banners posted welcoming birders, and many of the hotels started a breakfast service early (we were at the Holiday Inn Express and they had breakfast ready at 4:15 am). Even my favorite restaurant, Alicia's was experimenting with later hours.

It's also fun to meet the locals who come in to the trade show on the weekend. This guy had been birding but had taken a break in his life. I just loved his Chuck Norris shirt--I'm a big fan of Chuck Norris Facts.

And Another Thing About Harlingen, TX

I'm currently in the Harlingen Airport--who has FREE wireless(another great thing about this town)! A good chunk of the birding community is here on its first flight out of Harlingen. I'll be leaving the place where you can drive around and randomly see cool birds (and yet another great thing) in parking lots like this long-billed curlew that was chillin' in the movie theater parking lot.

I'll have lots more in depth coverage when I get back.

Great Thing About This Fest

One of the many things I love about this festival is the hospitality. The staff is constantly striving to make sure you see birds and are having a great time. This morning I went to drop Denese off at her field trip and I was walking back to the rental car when the festival president, Father Tom Pincelli shouts from across the lot, "Hey, Birdchick, do you need a tropcial kingbird?"

I said yes and he pointed to one and I digiscoped it on the spot. The tropical kingbird is right below the loggerhead shrike--two great birds, right in the parking lot.

Father Tom also pointed out some other birds on a nearby telephone line. He said that the larger one was a parrot.

Two introduced species side by side: European starling and red-crowned parrot.

The parrots are native to Mexico, but this particular population in Harlingen is the result of escaped birds thriving in a metro area--which works out, red-crowned parrots in their native land are endangered.

Here's an up close shot of that kingbird in the morning light. Great birds, right in the convention center parking lot.

Jeff Gordon's Mad Field Trippin' Skillz

Here are some slightly blurry, but oh so cool crested caracaras:

So on Friday I went birding on the King Ranch field trip to look for that ferruginous pygmy owl. It was supposed to be a chigger-ful area and after last year, you would think I would show more caution. Many were using duct tape to cover up shoe lace openings to prevent a chigger foot infestation:

The field trip leaders provided a plethora of colors for people to choose from.

Some even tried to cover up their sandals.

Some couldn't decide on which color to use.

Others (myself included) decided to throw caution to the wind and try our luck. To my surprise, I didn't get any chigger bites of my feet--whoot!

So Jeff Gordon--aka Jeff Gyr was one of the leaders on that trip. I knew Jeff was a good guy, great birder, all around fun to spend the day with, but I really had no idea of how good a field trip leader he is. Not only does he have a fun and easy going style and will work to get you the bird you want, but he goes the extra mile of really explaining what is going on--where to stand, when to be quiet and for how long--just several little things that really puts him over the top in the world of trip leading.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was this Sprague's pipit above. I had seen these at the Potholes and Prairie Bird Fest in North Dakota and it's not a species I expected to photograph. You usually don't see them until they are flushed or if they are doing a display flight. They kind of circle up in the air, almost as if they were climbing stairs. Then they fly around and do a little kiting (in the breeding season, they give their haunting call) and then they drop like a stone from the sky and land on the ground--not easy to photograph, let alone digiscope. Well, Jeff had everyone line up in a certain way, flush the bird and we got to watch it do its flight routine (without the song). After it landed, he had most of us stay on the other side of the field while he and a small group walked near where it landed. They moved slowly and followed the bird and eventually the bird walked out into the open--and even on to the gravel road--the whole group of 50 some odd people got to see the Sprague's pipit. Well played, Mr. Gordon, well played.

We also found a couple of other interesting things like this small mantis and...

and some sulphur shelf--no, I didn't collect and eat this one. Kind of hard to cook it when all you have in your room is a coffee pot.

Birding In Weslaco

We started our birding in the fog this morning. We were in a newer park in the Weslaco area called Estero Llano Grande State Park. This where the northern jacana was located this time last year. Llano Grande has a wonderful deck overlooking a lake. When we arrived at dawn there was a heavy fog and you could hear ducks, dowitchers and kingbirds.

This made for incredible atmosphere, but lousy digiscoping. This is a green kingfisher perched on top of a martin house.

But there were great birds all around like this lark sparrow who was mid preen when I took this photo.

It was very eerie, out of nowhere in the fog, huge flocks of red-wing blackbirds began to descend all around us, coming in for food. You would hear this large squeaky and squawking sound then this cloud of black would just appear overhead.

Gradually the fog began to lift and you could make out more birds, like these three black-bellied whistling ducks. It's interesting, there's been a black-bellied whistling duck hanging out on a lake about fifteen minutes from where I live in Minneapolis (that's a rare bird for that area) but I knew I would be seeing them soon in Texas and couldn't motivate myself to go see the one in the Twin Cities.

As the fog was lifting, several dew covered spider webs revealed themselves.

And the webs became part of the natural scenery in photos. Above is a female vermilion flycatcher perched near a web. Even though she isn't as bright as the male, she's still very attractive.

As the fog cleared, we started getting much better looks at the waterfowl. This bird confused me at first, but I think it's a molting green-winged teal--you can still see some cinnamon color around its bill--and the green on the wing.

I was really enjoying the shorebirds too. Check out that sleeping black-necked stilt surrounded by long-billed dowitchers. Looks like something out of Dr. Seuss.

Speaking of Dr. Seuss birds, check out this American avocet--they were quite active, there were several who spent so much time chasing each other, it's a wonder that they ever got enough to eat. While I was watching this bird, I noticed some movement behind it. To my surprise and delight...

I saw a sora! This bird was lurking in the reeds and then stopped right before it got to the opening out onto the water. I aimed my scoped just a little in front the sora and focused it. I figured the sora was making sure the ares was predator free before it would walk out into the open. However, instead of walking the bird jumped in the air, flew over the boardwalk and landed in another set of reeds. Not the exact shot I wanted of a sora, but fun to watch the behavior.

This young kiskadee let our group get quite close and many of us had a chance to get a photo. The group stayed still until the kiskadee decided to fly off. You can still see the gape at the corners of this bird's mouth--it's not very old at all. Look how scruffy the tail is.

After Llano Grande we made a couple more stops, one being Frontera Audubon. I thought it was interesting to note that as one of our field trip leaders was crouching to get a better look at a bird, a cat came up and started rubbing on his leg and spotting scope tripod. Silly kitty, birders think you should be indoors, not hanging around a great birding park.

And here's is one of the star feeder birds in south Texas--the green jay. What a treat! But the park was loaded with plain chachalacas:

Boy, you think squirrels can take over bird feeders, you should see a huge flock of chachalacas in action. That made short work of many of the grapefruits set out to attract orioles and butterflies--and they are just all over. You would walk along the trails, have a sensation of being watched, scan the brush and then find a chachalaca casually staring at you through the brush from only a few feet away. I think they're plotting. What, I don't know.

Okay, and now I have to sleep for more birding fun tomorrow.