Late Afternoon Birding

After our big day of birding yesterday (our second this week) we took it easy today. After breakfast, I went for a long walk up the beach and back - about 5 miles (8.1 km). It was a perfect day for walking - not too windy and it was overcast.

I did some knitting and after lunch and Skip's nap we went to the post office (no mail for us) to mail some postcards, the car wash and birding at the convention centre.

The birding conditions were perfect. It was low tide and the water was really calm. There were tons of gulls, skimmers and terns - mostly royal terns. My pictures today were of much better quality.

In addition to those photographed, we also saw through the scope (but didn't get pictures of): a long-billed dowitcher, a black-bellied plover and a willet.

Lesser and greater yellowlegs






















Greater yellowlegs


















Marbled godwit
















Pied-bill greve in breeding phase

















White ibis










Brown pelican taking off. This species is endangered but is making a comeback since DDT was outlawed.














Reddish egret

















Roseate spoonbill

















The secretive Clapper Rail.

































Lesser yellowlegs











Pintail duck














It's going to be 84F tomorrow (29C).

Three Hundredth Post! Warning - Heavy Birding Content

I was just logging in and noticed that since the inception of my blog, I've made 300 posts. Whee!

Today was a birding marathon for us at Estero Llano (pronounced ya-no) Grande State Park south of Weslaco, TX - about 100km west of us in South Padre Island. The name means 'Big Estuary Plain'. It is a lovely birding spot where 299 species of birds have been spotted, many unique to south Texas.

Unfortunately my photos left a lot to be desired (mmm - they stunk) and my camera battery died by about 11:30am so I am posting what few pictures I got, will steal a few images from Google Images and will link to images from elsewhere on the Internet.
We had to leave SPI early (7am) in order to get to the park in time to take the morning birding walking tour at 8:30. There were about 50 of us assembled for our guided walk. With our tour guide, we were able to access parts of the park that are out of bounds for unescorted visitors to the park. We did spot several unique birds, such as the Tropical Parula, the Black-throated Magpie Jay (I had seen the White-throated Magpie Jay in Costa Rica a few years back) and probably my 'bird of the day' the Rose-throated Becard. We also spotted a some Golden-fronted Woodpeckers,


















a Chachalaca, Yellow-rumped Warblers, a Common Pauraque












a couple of Inca Doves, and an Indigo Snake.

















After a 'comfort stop' back at the park office, the group then headed in the other direction to Alligator Pond, Kiskadee Lane and up onto the levee adjacent to the estuary. On this walk, we spotted Pied-bill and Least Grebes,

Pied-bill grebe photo by Michael L. Baird














Northern Shovelers, a Cinnamon Teal, Neotropic and Double-crested Cormorants,

Anhingas,












White-faced Ibis, White-tailed Kites, Soras, Solitary and Least Sandpipers, a Vermilion Flycatcher, a couple of Belted Kingfishers,

Photo by Michael L. Baird













Great Kiskadees, Red-winged Blackbirds and a Couch's Kingbird. About 2 feet from one of our paths we had an amazing view of another Common Pauraque. It was just hunkered down with its eyes closed. Its camoflage was very effective as it just looked like a pile of leaves. It wasn't until we looked through binoculars or the spotting scope that one could see that the 'leaves' were indeed feathers. We also spotted two alligators








and a spiny lizard.















After leaving the park for lunch, we returned (our $4 per person admission was for the whole day) for a foray on our own with our own spotting scope and retraced the second of our morning walks. We went back and took a good look at the Common Pauraque again and had a good look up on the levee at the American Avocets and Roseate Spoonbills. We also got another good look at both the Spotted and Solitary Sandpipers












and the brilliantly coloured Vermilion Flycatcher. There were also Green-winged and Blue-winged Teals in the same pond as Coots, Moorhens, a Great Egret, a Reddish Egret, Northern Shovelers and two Soras.

Photo by Michael L. Baird












We really enjoyed poking along at our own pace and taking as long as we wanted to look through our scope.

After 7 hours of birding we made our way back to SPI and enjoyed a meal at Daddy's - a local fish place. Tomorrow will be a lazy day.

I even got some knitting done in the car this morning.

I Got Mail!

This year, Skip and I decided to get box at the South Padre Island office for our two month stay in the sunny south. It's the first time I've ever had a Zip Code (+4). I ordered a couple of things online last week and went to the post office Friday and yesterday to see if anything had arrived - to no avail. All that was in the box yesterday was the previous occupant's junk mail.

We dropped by the post office again today and I GOT MAIL! A parcel I had ordered from KnitPicks last Tuesday had arrived! I think Skip was as excited as I was.

This is what was in the parcel:


















Melissa Leapman's "Cables Untangled"

"Socks a la carte"

and four KnitPicks skeins of lace weight yarn:

Alpaca Cloud (100% Baby Alpaca) - Papaya
Shadow (100% Merino Wool) - Juniper
Gloss Lace (70/30 Merino/Silk) - Cypress
Alpaca Cloud - Raspberry

Goody! Goody! Goody! USPS Rocks!

Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge

Today we went to my favourite place, the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, only 30 minutes away from our condo. There is a 15 mile loop that goes along the Laguna Madre for about 7 miles. There are various places to pull over and birdwatch from the car or along the side of the road. We saw hundreds of redheads in one lake and hundreds of coots in another. Over 400 species of birds have been spotted there.

Here are some of the better photos I took today (it was overcast most of the time).

Three little blue herons (egretta caerulea) and a tricolour heron (egretta tricolor)








White-faced ibis (plegadis chihi)












Mr. and Mrs. Northern Shoveler (anas clypeata)









and Mr. Shoveler on his own. Skip calls them 'mallards on steroids'.














long-billed thrasher (toxostoma longirostre)














green jay (cyanocorax yncas)

















Using the spotting scope we saw an unusual deer-like animal but it was bigger and had a humped back. When we asked at the office, they told us it was a Nilgai a type of deer from India. I'm not really sure how it ended up at Atascosa but 4 of them were spotted from the observation deck we were on.

And the highlight of the day was spotting this blue bunting (cyanocompsa parellina). It looks a lot like the indigo bunting but is slightly different. It is rarely seen above the Rio Grande River. This is certainly my 'bird of the day' and possibly of the whole time down here.

I saw him and the female (which is all brown) as I approached the photo blind and they flew off. It took a few minutes before he returned and posed for me only a few feet away. She didn't return while I was there. Skip and I looked him up in the big Sibley and learned that he wasn't an indigo bunting after all, that he was the blue bunting. He has darker shades of blue on his head behind his eyes and down his cheeks.

I still have managed to get some knitting done and the Madli scarf continues to grow longer.

Finally - Some Birding Photos

We've been doing a lot of birding and I'm way behind with my pictures. I have finally found a program (Picasa) that uploads my photos quickly and has very dynamic editing capabilities.

Yesterday we went birding at the convention centre. It was the lowest I'd ever seen the tide. We saw an osprey (pandion haliaetus),


















a sora (porzana carolina),















a lesser yellowlegs (tringa flavipes),















pied-bill grebe (podilymbus podiceps),

















a grumpy-looking little blue heron (egretta caerulea),

















a semiplamated plover (charadrius semiplamatus),


















a tricolour heron (egretta tricolor),



skimmers (rynchops niger), and redheads (aythya americana).
















This morning we drove to the University of Texas at Brownsville to birdwatch at the resaca that runs through the campus. It was very windy again today but did some good birding. In addition to the usual anhingas and white egrets we saw double-crested cormorants and neotropic cormorants. We saw a group of four black-crowned night herons (nycticorax nycticorax)















and I spotted a golden-fronted woodpecker (melanerpes aurifrons) which is a Texas specialty.

















We then drove over to Resaca de la Palma State Park just west of Brownsville and took the tram to one of the paths to a resaca. We saw a couple of coots (fulica americana) and moorhens (gallinula chloropus) and a great kiskadee (pitangus sulphuratus).

Settling In

We spent Monday and Tuesday getting accustomed to our surroundings and getting in more provisions. We did some birding at the convention centre here on the island. Wednesday morning we took advantage of Winter Texan Appreciation Day at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville. We had a discounted admission fee and received a coupon for a free coffee.

The Gladys Porter Zoo is well laid-out although quite small - under 30 acres. There is quite a variety of animals including the rare Komodo Dragon.
















There were bongos,
















a 1 1/2 month-old camel,
















a serval cat (which made me miss my Ollie),
















a very bizarre-looking marabou stork that was about 5 feet tall and many other species.




















Yesterday, we met Ken and Donna Eyre at their vacation home in Weslaco, about 95km west of South Padre Island. Ken was the music consultant and in on the interview when I was hired to teach at St. Patrick's High School in Sarnia 1978. I taught there for 11 years before moving to Durham Region. The four of us golfed at the Llano Grande Golf Course, very close to one of our favourite birding centres. We had a very pleasant, relaxing day.

While golfing we saw long-billed curlews, eastern meadowlarks, a rookery of egrets, anhingas, cormorants and white pelicans.

I've been fighting the cold I caught from Skip and had a really scratchy throat last night but I think I'm better today. I sure hope so. The golfing yesterday wore us out. It was quite windy but nice to be out in the sun. We didn't really get going today until after lunch when we went back to the convention centre to do some birdwatching.

On the knitting front, I started a lace scarf using the Madli's Shawl pattern from Nancy Bush's "Knitted Lace of Estonia". I'm only doing 4 repeats which will block to 11" and the Aegean colourway from KnitPicks Gloss Lace.

Day Six - Arriving at Last

We arrived in Brownsville at about noon today and went immediately to the Tourist Information Centre to inquire about the International Birdwatching Festival we hope to attend.

The pyramid behind me is the information centre.











Unfortunately, although the birding festival was a huge success two years ago when Skip attended on his own (I was still working), it was cancelled last year and never got off the ground this year. What a bummer.

However it was a lovely sunny day and we saw our first little lizard in front of the info centre.

He was about 10cm (4") long.













We then headed to South Padre Island to have lunch at The Lost Galleon and check into our condo. This is a shot towards the south end of the island from the Queen Isabella Bridge from Port Isabel on the mainland.

It was 26C when this picture was taken.












When I called Viviana, the property manager, she informed us that the repairs to the condo we were supposed to occupy had not been completed so we are in a completely different location - in a condo complex at the south end of the island. It has a pool and hot tubs, tennis courts and a laundry room on the premises.

Tomorrow we are going birding right after breakfast, will shop for the rest of the provisions for the condo and get some laundry done.

I had about 10" done on the back of the Must Have Cardigan II but upon closer inspection I noted that I hadn't crossed a cable the right way about 4" back so had to frog and correct my mistake. Oh well, it just means I get to do more knitting.

This parting shot is of the cover of the Palestine (pronounced Palace-teen), TX phone book. We stayed there two nights ago.

Texas just isn't like any other place on earth. And we love it.

















Here's the entire route we travelled this week.