Thanksgiving afternoon all the kids had
left and I was sitting around trying to decide what I wanted to do when
I discovered Sue had her bag packed and was preparing to leave—"I’m not
sitting here for 3 days," was her comment. It didn’t take me long
to get some clothes together and then while I got the camping gear loaded
she packed up some food and we were off for The Rio Grande Valley.
We got to Bentsen Rio Grande
State Park about 8, set up camp and turned in after a hot shower (love
those state park facilities). The main reason we headed here was
because I wanted to see the Green jays. Seeing one of them would
make this a successful trip.
When I crawled out of the tent Fri.
morning I was surrounded by over half a dozen green jays!! They were
as thick as house sparrows. WOW, they are gorgeous. I
put on the coffee and then walked down the road about 100 feet to talk
to a couple with binoculars looking up in the trees. While I was
talking to them a bright splash of color landed in the tree in front of
us. It was the Alta Mira oriole (actually a pair), also found only
in the valley (only place in U.S.). This trip was already successful
and I hadn’t been up but about 30 minutes. Two life sightings before
coffee!
After a bagel we hiked one of
the trails in the park down to the Rio Grande River. I saw some brown,
tan breasted flycatchers but wasn’t able to ID them before they flitted
off.
Next we headed out to Santa
Ana National Wildlife Refuge, which is south of Pharr. We took a
tram ride to tour the park since the road is closed to vehicles this time
of the year. That was pretty much a waste of time and $6.00 but at
least we now know that we wouldn’t have missed anything by taking it.
We hiked some of the trails,
about 2 miles or so and I got three more life sightings (see the list).
The only way I got the Green kingfisher was through another birder we talked
too. We ran into this guy beside one of the small lakes and were
talking about the green kingfisher when he said, "There’s one." I
didn’t see a thing, but he had his spotting scope set up with the bird
in view in less than five seconds, and let me look until my heart was content.
Even after seeing it in the scope, I had trouble locating it with binoculars.
They are difficult to see. Later, after a long hike through some
really fierce mosquitoes we saw the ringed kingfisher in some reeds—and
I found it all by myself! Oh, I did get a glimpse of a chachalaca
on the tram ride and could count it but it wasn’t a really satisfactory
sighting.
Saturday we left camp before
8:00 a.m. and headed for Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge on the
coast. Just before we got there, I spotted a white soaring bird gliding
side to side on the wind and ID’d it as the Black Shouldered Kite.
Really graceful in flight. There is a 17 miles loop that parallels
the bay in places and a fresh water lake in other places. The birding
here was great. Made me wish I had paid more attention when I lived
in Port Lavaca. People drive from all over North America to see what
I saw every fishing trip there. We saw an Osprey carrying a fish
that had to be at least 3 lbs., maybe 5. It was as long as the Osprey’s
body. Also, saw another Osprey sitting on a post eating a large fish
held under its talons. There was a gull sitting on the water close
by waiting on bits and pieces to hit the water –the gull was keeping a
safe distance. As you can see on the list I got several life sightings
here and identified a lot of birds. There were a lot of ibis’s and
roseate spoonbills here, along with all the little shore birds (pipers,
plovers, etc.) that are virtually un-identifiable, for me anyway.
LBJ’s—little brown jobs. The trip to the Refuge headquarters was
rather dull and also a trip down to Laguna Atascosa—nothing but Coots by
the thousands there (the HQ at Aransas Wildlife Refuge takes some time
to go through it). However, at the lake we talked to a couple we
met on the drive-through and they told us about a boardwalk on S. Padre
Island at Port Isabel. Since Port Isabel was less than 30 minutes
away and we were finished at Atascosa we headed south on the back roads.
Turned out to be a 20 minute drive. We stopped at the Port I. Lighthouse
(Sue had never seen it) and took a few pictures and then headed across
the causeway to the island.
The boardwalk was supposed to
be a good place to see rails, but the cattails were so thick you couldn’t
find anything. At the end of the boardwalk were some benches so we
sat down there and for a lack of anything better to do I started trying
to ID the gulls sitting close by. I got one gull and one tern ID’d!
Walking back in I kept seeing an occasional reed moving differently from
those moving in the wind. Turned out to be marsh wrens. Very
elusive and hard to spot. Finding them is like trying to watch mice
in a hayfield. We had a seafood supper and headed back to Bentsen
after dark.
Sunday we got up and packed
pretty early. Also visited with other birders walking around and
saw the orioles again in the bright sunlight. The only thing left
was the Chachalacas. I really hadn’t seen them so I took a short
hiking trail to another camping area to look for them. As I was walking
along, I heard a noise, somewhat like a helicopter’s rotors beating the
wind, right over my head. It was the Chacalacas moving. They
were all around me. The only thing remarkable about these birds is
their size—about 22 in. long. When they fly they resemble a roadrunner
but bodies are heavier. They mostly hop through the trees.
As we left Bentsen, we drove through the trailer area where the snow-birds
stay. They put out feeders and the Chachalacas there by the hundreds.
AND they are noisy. I’m not sure I would want to put out feed and
keep them around.
We decided to take the long way home and followed the
Rio Grande up to Laredo via highway 83. There is a birding spot in
a little Mexican village off the highway just below Falcon Dam but we couldn’t
find the spot. The little village is small, rough streets, no store
or gas and no one knew anything. We had gotten general directions
rather than specific ones. The sight is through the village on the
river, but I didn’t find that out until we got home and I called a friend.
We stopped at Falcon State Park
and made sandwiches while watching birds over the lake. On the way
out of the park I circled around to see what the campsites were like and
spotted a Harris Hawk sitting in a dead tree close to the road. I
pulled over so Sue could get a good look at it. Before I could look
at it, I saw some little sparrows scratching around under a tree in front
of the car. While I was looking at them and trying to find them in
the bird book, I noticed something moving in the brush beside the car about
50 feet away. This bird was hopping in and out of a huge prickly
pear cactus. While I was looking at it through binoculars a different
bird hopped out. Wow, I had my hands full trying to ID three new
birds at one time! Amazing. I stopped to look at a hawk I had
already seen and got three life sightings! The rest of the trip home
was pretty uneventful.
All in all, it was a pretty successful
3½ days of birding and seeing the countryside. The valley
is OK to visit but not to live. In places you drive and drive and
drive and never get away from people, stores, malls, etc. The economy
down there seems to revolve around used car lots rather than agriculture
as we have been led to believe. We spent 3 days on the Rio Grande
and never crossed the river into Mexico.
Oh, on the way down, I got pulled
over by a state trooped just after dark. He wrote me a warning ticket
for not using my blinker when changing lanes and the window tint was too
dark. The whole situation and the way he acted was really weird.
There was a second trooper who stood behind the open passenger door of
the patrol car watching the whole time and making a few comments.
I got the impression this was a rookie and I was a guinea pig in his training.
What a pain.
Life Sightings-Thanksgiving-Nov. 27, 28, 29,
& 30, 1997
Bentsen Rio Grande State Park, Mission, TX Green Jay
Alta mira oriole
Chachalaca
Black-crowned night heron (first mature sighted)
Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, Pharr, TX Green kingfisher
Ringed kingfisher
Blackburnian warbler
Aguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, Rio Hondo,
TX Black shoulder kite
Caspian Tern
Hooded merganser (pair)
Red head
Sandwich Tern
White faced ibis
Osprey (first good sighting)-carrying fish in 3# range
Boardwalk @ Convention Center-S. Padre Island-Port
Isabel, TX Ring billed gull
Herring gull
Royal Tern
Marsh wren
Black Skimmer (spotted long ago in Port Lavaca but not
recorded on my list)
Falcon State Park, Falcon Lake, Zapata, TX Black throated sparrow
Song sparrow
Cactus Wren
ALSO: great kiskadee, tricolored heron,
great blue heron, little blue heron, Harris hawk,
American kestrel, kildeer, meadow lark, mocking bird,
vermilion flycatcher, brown pelican, white pelican, long billed
dowitcher, marbled godwit, northern harrier, coot, shoveler,
green winged teal, belted kingfisher, great tailed grackle, European
starling, Olivaceous cormorant, blue-gray gnatcatcher,
Couch’s kingbird, great egret, snowy egret, loggerhead shrike,
turkey vulture, black vulture, un-identified flycatcher, raven
(common and/or Chihuahuan, crow ?, red tail hawk, long billed
curlew, crested caracara, white ibis, roseatte spoonbill, ladder-backed
woodpecker, golden fronted woodpecker, and red-winged blackbird.
