A Big Day!

Yesterday was our regular Thursday morning outing with the Bay Area Birders. Our destination was the beach at Boca Chica at the mouth of the Rio Grande River. Skip and I got to the end of the road where the beach started before the rest of the group so backtracked a bit to do some birding along the road.

This little guy had the look and colouring of a scissor-tailed flycatcher and he was flycatching. Skip read in one of our field guides that juveniles don't have the long tail feathers right away. After we got back to the condo we were looking through phoebes in the field guide and saw that this bird was indeed a Say's phoebe. Mystery solved.

On the watery flats, a few sanderlings were running around.

We thought this next bird was a long-billed curlew but after looking at other photos online, we now think this is a whimbrel.

Here's a shot of the two of them together.

A Chihuahuan raven was on an overhead wire. First, it snagged a little crab. Then it flew down and grabbed a piece of orange.

The wind blew its feathers such that we could see white beyond the tips of the ones on its head. I didn't even know this was a thing.

This Harris' hawk had a band on each leg.

To get to the beach, we drove past Elon Musk's SpaceX. It looked like something out of "Lost in Space" - very rinky-tink.

There was a launch recently of an unmanned craft that immediately crashed. The debris was just lying beside the road. I'm glad it didn't crash over an inhabited area.

Then our birding group showed up in a convoy of 5 cars, drove off the end of the paved road and onto the beach. They tore off before we could get the car turned around to the right direction. We did see them in the distance so followed - driving on the beach - kinda slithering along. It was very strange because the water was almost at high tide. Then the convoy disappeared around a bend up the beach  and it was just us, following their tire tracks on a beach about three car widths wide.

We drove about a kilometre before we confessed to each other that we were very freaked out. In some places the water had already washed away some of the tire tracks. So we bailed. The beach was too narrow to do a 3-point turn so I drove backwards for several hundred yards until there was a spot wide enough for me to turn around. We were very glad to see the beginning of the paved road. I don't have any pictures because we were in survival mode.

On the way back from Boca Chica Beach, there is a Customs and Border Patrol checkpoint. Armed officers with German shepherds check each car that goes through to make sure there are no undocumented people or contraband in the car. Being right at the southern border would make it very easy for boats to come over and leave stuff on the beach. With our skin colour, Tilley hats, and Ontario licence plates, they just wave us through.

We decided instead to go to the Sabal Palm Audubon Sanctuary at the very south end of Brownsville. But first, we needed to grab something to eat and get some gas in the car. We pulled into a Sunoco station that displayed Laredo Taco Company menu.

I ordered the taco plate for $4.99 and a Diet Dr Pepper. The plate came with two sides. I chose charro beans and sopa de fideo (noodle soup).  It tasted a lot better than it looked.

Skip had the Gran Tocino the 'Big Bacon' taco. Instead of 2 for $3, he only ordered one so it cost him $1.99. With a bottle of water and tax, his lunch cost $3.18.

My long-time readers will remember our past experience with gas station food, and our sighting on our way down to TX this year.

Actually we had heard a lot of good things about the Laredo Taco Co. tacos over the past years so were glad they didn't disappoint.

While at the Sunoco station, we saw a couple of our birding friends. They were as freaked out as we were when they drove along the beach. Our intrepid leader had misread the tide chart. She thought it was going to be a really low tide. It turns out they didn't really see much anyway so we really didn't miss anything after all.

In order to get to Sabal Palm, we have to drive through the border wall. Here, it is going through a farmer's field and goes up along a levee that we have to drive over through the wall. The opening is patrolled 24/7 by the Customs and Border Patrol - a big white Chevy Suburban with a diagonal green stripe. They don't give us any problem, like their colleagues at the checkpoint we went through earlier.

After checking in at the sanctuary we walked directly to the feeding station. There are picnic tables and benches for observers. The tray in the centre of the photo is kept stocked with food for the birds. The box on the taller post to the left contains a live cam that operates during daylight hours.

Below the tray are a couple of water features.

Before long, some green jays came in for some food.

Then a white-tipped dove - a Texas specialty.

Cardinals

There were several Altamira orioles - another Texas specialty bird.

Olive sparrow.

Every time we come here we see a black-tufted titmouse.

The long-billed thrasher flew in to feed and back into a tree before I could get a good shot.

The office is in part of this house which was built in the early 1900s. Recently it registered with Airbnb. I asked the volunteer about the Airbnb thing and he said it was more of a 'B' than a 'B and B'. No breakfast is served. Someone lives in another house on site. He also said it would be a pretty secure place to stay because of the Border Patrol folks. I'm not sure it's my 'cup of tea'.

This is one of the Sabal palms that had been recently planted. It is the state tree of South Carolina and Florida. Its silhouette is on the SC licence plate. Sabal palms are resistant to freezing temperatures that can occasionally occur in the south.

Then we headed back to the island and decided to stop in at the Sheepshead lot to see what was there. It was nice and sunny.

My first scissor-tailed flycatcher of the year!!!

I take pictures of any monarch butterflies I see.

While at Sheepshead, we saw Bev from our birding group. She told us about a western brown pelican that was hanging around the boardwalk at Jim's Pier. We didn't even know there was such a creature but she told us it had a red pouch instead of a pink one. We beetled over there to see if we could spot it.

It wasn't hard to spot.

But we never did get a good shot of a stretched-out pouch,

There were a few royal terns perched on various posts along the dock.

The less mature ones kinda look like Groucho Marx.

Ruddy turnstones were  busy strolling up and down the pier as well.

 The field guide referred to its 'calico plumage'. That's a very good description.

Back at the condo, we crashed. There had been a lot of activity - most of it amazing. Some was scary (beach drive), and most of it was a lot of fun.