South Texas is always a favorite for both participants and guides! There are just so many amazingly colorful and exotic birds that can be readily found, studied and photographed with relatively little effort! Normally, we would have two guides for our South Texas Tropicals Tour, but this year’s trip was a special occasion. Michael’s grandmother Sondra, the women largely responsible for getting both Raymond and Michael into birding, had recently celebrated her 80th birthday and as a birthday gift, BRANT comped her a free birding trip to Texas! So with Ray, Mike, Lee, Sondra as well as Bev, Lou, Joe, Charlie and Sam, we had a full and exciting trip to explore the birds and wildlife of South Texas!
Happy birthday Sondra!
The tour started on a windy and rather cold (upper 30’s is pretty cold in South Texas) afternoon in Harlingen. Not much going on this day besides some introductions and getting settled into our lovely accommodations at the Alamo Inn with owner Keith Hackland. Despite the wind, we did manage to find a cooperative Yellow-bellied Sapsucker at the park outside our hotel along with a pair of Golden-fronted Woodpeckers tending to a cavity in the dead palm tree outside our rooms!
Our first real day of the tour we decided to start off with a visit to the famous Estero Llano Grande State Park in Weslaco just a short drive from our hotel. The wind and cold had begun to subside from yesterday’s cold front and “Estero” was hopping with activity as it usually is! The lifers started pouring in fast and furious starting with a pair of Red-crowned Parrots on the wire near the parking area before we even got out of the van. As we entered the park the soon to be familiar sounds of Green Jays, Black-crested Titmice and Buff-bellied Hummingbirds could be heard milling about in the trees. Within minutes we had our first of all three of those species along with stunning, point blank scope looks at Clay-colored Thrush! Singing Olive Sparrows put on a show in the brush before we visited our first feeding station and the always entertaining antics of Plain Chachalacas! Just when the excitement was settling down, a stunning adult male Altamira Oriole flew overhead and, after a brief chase, provided excellent views as it sang from a perch high in a leafless tree!
After an unsuccessful search for Common Pauraque (the only time we’ve not been able to find this bird at Estero) we meandered our way to the wetland for a different selection of birds. Among the many waterfowl were the unbearably adorable Least Grebes diving mere feet away from us on the observation deck. The birds were so close we could actually see them swimming underwater and plucking various food morsels from the bottom of the shallow pond! Wow! What a sight!
Clay-colored Thrush
After a short break on the deck we headed back out to the now sunny and quickly warming trails. Now the raptors had bugun to move about and we were treated with views of Red-shouldered, Red-tailed and White-tailed Hawks, White-tailed Kite and Northern Harrier. At Anhinga pond we found, well, Anhinga of course, catching fish right off the waters edge! We also ticked some stunning Yellow-crowned and Black-crowned Night-Herons. Cave Swallow, a roosting Eastern Screech-Owl and Vermillion Flycatcher! Oddly enough we were again skunked by Common Pauraque. There is a nesting pair here that has been visible every single time we’ve been to Estero over the last 4 or 5 years, but today, they were not cooperative, how odd.
After lunch on the deck at Estero, we loaded back into the van and headed to Santa Ana NWR a short drive away. At Santa Ana, actively was down due to the rising temperatures, but the feeders were still hoping with Green Jays and Great Kiskadees! Working on a local tip, the group headed out to Pintail Lakes to search for a group of overwintering Groove-billed Anis. After a brief detour for Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet and another for a gorgeous Harris’s Hawk, we arrived at Pintail Lakes and began searching for the secretive Anis. Common and often conspicuous in the summer months, Anis are reclusive and very local in winter here. After about an hour and no luck Raymond spotted one by chance as it flew out from a dense hedge and into a nearby Sabal Palm tree in front of the trail. The group headed that direction but still no good looks at the ani! Finally, the bird jumped literally straight up out of the grass only a few feet away and then straight back down without so much as a wave! At least now Raymond had regained some credibility, but the bird remained elusive except for an occasional flash of black through the dense grass. And then, just as we were ready to give up, the bird flushed up to a nearby dead tree in full view and close range! The prehistoric looking bird continued to give us a show, calling and giving clear, close looks for quite some time before we moved on with the bird still out and visible. Still not sure what Raymond used to bribe the Ani into that but it was quite a show!
Altamira Oriole
The morning of day three found us at Mission Valley Nature Park searching for a group of Hook-billed Kites. Normally, Hook-billed Kites are a rather rare, local and infrequently seen specialty of the valley. However, in the weeks preceding our tour, a group of four or five kites had been staked out at this small city park. The group set up stools and scopes with several other groups of birders on the berm where the birds had been seen and waited.We were all spread out across the berm, scanning the mesquite flats below for several hours, but by 11am we had seen many new species including Greater Roadrunner, Verdin, Roseate Spoonbill, and a small group of Javelina, but no kites! One of the groups on the berm suddenly burst in excited movements and sounds, which could only signal one thing: the kites were found! Our group moved quickly to join the discoverers, but by the time we made it to the location only a fleeting glimpse was made as a kite flew into a large mesquite some distance away. We continued searching for the birds for another hour but were unsuccessful.
Green Jay
Tired and hot, we bitterly retired to our kiteless fate and headed to Bentsen State Park for lunch and more feather searching. Bentson was fairly slow in the afternoon heat but we were treated to more spectacular views of some of the regular bird feeder clientele such as Green Jay and Altamira Oriole. The resaca (oxbow lake) proved productive with nice scope views of Ringed Kingfisher!
In the late afternoon we drove to Harlingen to search for resident Green Parakeets and Red-crowned Parrots. These native parrots congregate in the more developed areas of South Texas, eating fruits, acorns, cacti and other such delicious things in people’s yards and in shopping mall parking lots. We started with a wild parrakeet chase through strip malls and a walmart parking lot in a 15 passenger van, always an interesting sight to see. While exciting, we didn’t manage to find any parakeets and the sun was beginning to get low so we headed across town to hunt for Red-crowned Parrots near the local High School. Again, we had an exciting and harrowing van driving experience, this time with a fruitful ending, literally. We found a large flock of nearly 500 Red-crowned Parrots having dinner in a large fruit tree behind a small house! The birds were so loud you couldn’t even hear the person next to you as they flew overhead!
Painted Redstart
Ray, Lee and Michael were cracking the whip at 4am this morning for the long drive to Laredo. Halfway through our morning drive we had a predawnpit stop at a roadside rest along the freeway. Unbeknownst to us, it was a rather birdy rest stop and even before dawn, the streetlights were drawing in lots of bird activity. Among other things we found a pair of Great Horned Owls and a very surprising Painted Redstart!
Just past dawn, we found ourselves on the banks of the Rio Grande underneath the International Bridge in Laredo, Texas. Here we were searching for the Audubon’s Orioles and White collared Seedeaters, specialties found only in the upper regions of the Rio Grande Valley. We quickly found a beautiful male Audubon’s Oriole along the edge of the river and got great scope views, but the Seedeaters proved more difficult. At the very last minute, just as we returned to our van to depart, Michael flushed up a beautiful male White-collared Seedeater quite literally right in front of the van! Everyone got great views and we left knowing our early morning efforts had been worthwhile.
We took lunch a few miles south at a bluff overlooking Mexico and the Rio Grande where we found more White-tailed Hawks and a Black-throated Sparrow before continuing south to Salineño Park. In the afternoon sun we again found most of our birds at the feeding station. Audubon’s Altamira and Hooded Orioles treated us with close views, as did Common Ground-Dove, White-tipped Dove and more.
Today we headed south to Brownsville and began our day at Sabal Palm Sanctuary. As the name implies, this sanctuary is a native Sabal Palm forest, one of the last remnants of this once widespread habitat type in the Rio Grande Valley. We started with a quick history lesson about the property from one of the local volunteers inside the newly opened visitor center which is in a refurbished, original, beautiful plantation style building on the property! After our introduction, we headed to the feeding station where our main target was a female Rose-throated Becard that had been seen here several times over the last week or so. We found Gray Catbirds and Yellow-throated Warblers but no Becard after about an hour of looking, at which point three bus loads of school kids arrived at the sanctuary to learn about their local ecology. While it was very nice to see so many kids learning about the outdoors, it put a damper on birding around the feeders so we opted to hit the trails. At the resaca we found many birds including Least Grebes, Wilson’s Warblers, a Black-throated Gray Warbler, Mottled Duck, Tropical Kingbird and an Osprey that came out of nowhere to capture a fish out of the pond!
We returned to the feeders to find most of the children had left so we pulled out our lunch and had a nice picnic on the tables next to the feeding station! After a few minutes, Michael wandered off and then interrupted lunch with a call of “I’ve got the Becard!” The group quickly rallied to the secretive mexican stray and managed to get some pretty great looks!
Rose-throated Becard Female
After lunch we headed to the famous Brownsville Dump. Probably not everyone’s first choice for places to visit during a vacation, but this dump is well known to produce huge numbers, and often very interesting gulls! We had an impromptu gulling workshop that yielded several Herring, Ring-billed and Lesser Black-backed Gulls among the thousands and thousands of Laughing Gulls. A smelly, but very cool experience!
“Yellow” Green Parakeet
Towards the evening we gave Green Parakeets another try, this time in McAllen. Our wild parakeet chase was very successful starting with a pair of birds flying overhead as we gassed up the van. We quickly relocated the birds in front of the Lowes coming down to drink and bath in a public fountain. We were treated to multiple flocks bathing, drinking and carrying on only feet away. We even got to see a “yellow” Green Parakeet, a pigment challenged individual who appears completely yellow instead of green. A spectacular way to end the day!
Today we headed to the coast! We started the morning at Laguna Atascosa NWR with more Green Jays, Plain Chachalaca, Couch’s Kingbirds and the sort. By mid-day we found ourselves searching the coastal plain for Aplomado Falcons. In the wind, the birds were difficult to find but we finally picked out a pair of these gorgeous and striking falcons perched low against an abandoned corral. We were able to approach within 50 yards or so and get point-blank views of these amazing birds! We watched them for over 30 minutes and even witnessed them copulating several times (who ever said birding was innocent?)! At the same time we found a cooperative Chihuahuan Raven showing off his or her white neck feathers in the wind, how cool!
After we had our fill of the falcons, we headed to South Padre Island for some more water birds. The boardwalk at the convention center yielded many new species including dancing Reddish Egrets, skimming Black Skimmers, and up-close views of Clapper Rails! We also had good numbers of waterfowl, terns, various waders and a few passerines as well. We spent several hours on the Island with many great birds, but one of the best highlights had to be the dinner at Captain Roy’s Seafood House! Shrimp wrapped in bacon with special sauce was high on the list of best sightings for the day!
On our last day of the main tour, we spent the morning cleaning-up a few birds missed earlier in the trip. The first highlight of the morning was at Edinburg Scenic Wetlands where we managed decent views of a Green Kingfisher and knock-out looks at a Tropical Parula! Then, back at Estero Llano Grande, we finally caught up with the Common Pauraque that we missed earlier in the trip. He was right where he always is, just waiting for us, I wonder where he was a few days earlier?
By mid-day we were headed for a farewell lunch as two of our cohort, Sam and Charlie would be headed home today leaving the rest of us to head for Corpus Christi and Whooping Cranes. We had a lovely, home cooked fajita lunch, hosted at our good friends, Marci and Terry Fuller’s home near Harlingen. Marci and Terry graciously shared their beautiful home and yard (right on a large resaca!) with us as we said our goodbyes to our new friends and prepared for our next leg of the journey! After lunch we loaded the van and headed for Corpus Christi!
That was it for the birds on this day, but the dinner was worth a mention. A small mediterranean grill on the outskirts of Corpus Christi was a great find! Amazing slow cooked lamb, tapas, and other mediterranean treats!
Common Pauraque
Our Whooping Crane adventure began with a short drive to Rockport to load on the Skimmer, a locally operate tour boat. We headed out in dense fog towards the Aransas NWR where our Whooping Cranes were waiting. We quickly added Brown Pelican, American Oystercatcher, Caspian Tern, and Dunlin to our list! The fog made viewing difficult but our experienced captain managed to quickly find a pair of Whooping Cranes on shore and skillfully maneuvered us to within 50 feet of these amazing birds. If you’ve never seen Whooping Cranes, it’s quite the experience. Their size and beauty is awe inspiring, a sentiment shared by everyone on the boat as we watched these amazing birds for over 30 minutes! We continued to wander the saltmarsh for several more hours and ended up seeing well over a dozen individual cranes, some at quite a distance, some very close! We also found a multitude of other birds including great looks at Seaside Sparrows, Roseate Spoonbills, White Ibis, Little Blue Heron, Merlin and others.
After disembarking from the boat we headed to a nearby seafood shack for lunch and then headed south to the Port Aransas Jetty for the afternoon. At the jetty we had a few more interesting birds such as Bonaparte’s Gull and Ruddy Turnstone, but Northern Gannets were out of sight. We had one last seafood meal for our farewell dinner before heading back to the hotel.
Whooping Cranes
Our very last day was to be mostly taken up by traveling back to Harlingen and dropping everyone off at the airport. However, the group was quick to be ready and we did manage to spare a few minutes birding in Harlingen before having to head to the airport. We spent the majority of our time at Lake Harlingen, a small park and lake in the center of town. It was pretty windy, but the enormous flock of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks didn’t seem to mind much. We had well over 500 of these clown-like ducks whistling away on the edge of the lake. Joe had informed us earlier that he need one more life bird in order end on a prime number, 43. Or was it 41? Anyways, we let him down easy saying that wasn’t all that likely with only a couple hours left before having to board the plane and head home. But by some stroke of luck, Raymond managed to pick out a pair of Fulvous-Whistling Ducks among the hundreds of Black-bellieds! A pretty good find this time of year, and Joe’s coveted 41st lifer.. or 43rd was it?
Finally, after nine long and birdy days, we returned to the Harlingen Airport and said adios to our friends and to another amazing adventure in South Texas!
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