Trip List: Texas 2011

This is a list of all the birds we saw during our December 2011 vacation to the Texas coast. The birds are listed in the order that we observed them.

• Killdeer
  
• Rock Dove
  
• Mallard
  
• Boat Tailed Grackle
  
• American Kestrel
  
• Osprey
  
• American Coot
  
• Snow Goose
  
• Pied Billed grebe
  
• American Crow
  
• Canada Goose
  
• English Sparrow
  
• European Starling
  
• Turkey Vulture
  
• Black Vulture
  
• Swamp Sparrow
  
• Field Sparrow
  
• Lesser Scaup
  
• Canvasback
  
• Northern Mockingbird
  
• Great Egret
  
• Red Tail Hawk
  
• Northern Cardinal
  
• White Throated Sparrow
  
• Carolina Chickadee
  
• Eastern Phoebe
  
• Bald Eagle
  
• Yellow Rumped Warbler
  
• American Robin
  
• Eastern Bluebird
  
• Brown Pelican
  
• American White Pelican
  
• Red Winged Blackbird
  
• Eastern Screech Owl
  
• Broadwing Hawk
  
• Willett
  
• Red Shouldered Hawk
  
• Great Blue Heron
  
• White Tailed Kite
  
• Belted Kingfisher
  
• Herring Gull
  
• Royal Tern
  
• Common Grackle
  
• Semi Palmated Sandpiper
  
• Sanderling
  
• Ring Billed Gull
  
• Laughing Gull
  
• White Ibis
  
• Northern Harrier
  
• Western Meadowlark
  
• Snowy Egret
  
• Double Crested Cormorant
  
• Greater Yellowlegs
  
• Ruddy Turnstone
  
• Ground Dove
  
• Mottled Duck
  
• Lesser Snow Goose
  
• Lincoln's Sparrow
  
• Long Billed Dowitcher
  
• Greylag Goose
  
• Golden Plover
  
• Pipping Plover
  
• Snowy Plover
  
• Loggerhead Shrike
  
• Reddish Egret
  
• Long Billed Curlew
  
• Little Blue Heron
  
• Forster's Tern
  
• Caspian Tern
  
• Red Breasted Merganser
  
• American Wigeon
  
• Ring Necked Duck
  
• Red Bellied Woodpecker
  
• Sandhill Crane
  
• Roseate Spoonbill
  
• Baird's Sandpiper
  
• Green Winged Teal
  
• Hooded Merganser
  
• Northern Shoveler
  
• Crested Caracara
  
• Semi Palmated Plover
  
• Common Goldeneye
  
• American Oystercatcher
  
• Bank Swallow
  
• Clapper Rail
  
• Gadwall
  
• Northern Pintail
  
• Redhead Duck
  
• Black Crowned Night Heron
  
• Black Necked Stilt
  
• Common Moorhen
  
• Mourning Dove
  
• Great Kiskadee
  
• White Crowned Sparrow
  
• Greater Roadrunner
  
• Inca Dove
  
• White Winged Dove
  
• Song Sparrow
  
• Carolina Wren
  

Robert

Leaving the Coast and Heading Back

   It was time to leave the coast and head back to Dallas for the flight out. But we wanted to peek in on the shorebirds again. In the pouring rain, we identified a juvenile Reddish Egret (perfectly white, blue legs, and blue beak) poking into the water in a reed bed on the causeway back to the mainland.

juvenile Reddish Egret

   We drove through the countryside away from the coast and the habitat changed from moist reeds and sandy beaches to the semi-arid central Texas brushland. There were hawks and buzzards and kestrels on every third telephone pole. Predators wait in the curve of the Texas coast to attack and eat the other birds who migrate south and then north around the curve of the Texas coast.

   Some rancher kept Zebras, Ostrichs and Springboks on his ranch. Down the street from him we spotted the beautiful Great Kiskadee. It is remarkable with Rufous back and wings, bright yellow chest, and striking black crown and supercilia. Last time we had seen this one was along the border right next to the Rio Grande. This time it was further north.

   I was studying a busy bunch of White Crowned Sparrows on a fence, when Berry nudged me to notice the Greater Roadrunner walking across the road in front of our car. This was delightful. He paused next to the fence and we studied him from within twenty feet. They eat lizards and snakes so the people nearby love them. Fantastic chance to see this magnificent bird.

   We drove slowly around the neighborhood and discovered a small flock of Inca Doves pecking at a dusty patch in someone's yard. Wow! Another life bird for us. The Inca Dove looks scaly due to the dark border of each of its feathers, but this forms an effective camouflage in the dusty landscape.

Inca Dove

   We finally saw the White Winged Dove in an old Spanish Mission near San Antonio. Some kid ran at them to scare them away. We call people like this the "Bird Chasers" and wonder where their pie plate and metal spoon are.

Robert

photo courtesy of kkarlson, tbkinsey

From Port Lavaca to Aransas

   In Port Lavaca we went to the Lighthouse and walked on the Beach Boardwalk to a pavilion in the marshy part of the bay. We found both the Semi Palmated Sandpiper and the Semi Palmated Plover. In birding terms "semi palmated" means "with partially webbed feet". Common Goldeneye Ducks were in the water next to us. And two really handsome American Oystercatchers were standing at the end of the pier.

American Oystercatcher

   Two Roseate Spoonbills flew over the boardwalk. Looking down into the reed bed we found a small Clapper Rail hidden in the reeds. Laughing Gulls and Ring Billed Gulls were everywhere. On the sand were the Baird's Sandpiper and the little Sanderlings who ran scampering up and down with the waves. Here we saw a Long Billed Curlew eating a shrimp.

   Right down the road we entered the Guadalupe Estuary WMA. In a small bog there we saw an Eastern Phoebe perched on a limb above the water and tons of Double Crested Cormorants perched on posts in the water. The Crested Caracara was patrolling the paths of the wildlife management area along with a cute orange juvenile Northern Harrier.

   We are bird-watching but we bump into other wildlife too. There were two large Armadillos digging in an open field. These are prehistoric looking dinosaurs with gray armor and sharp claws.

Armadillo

   It was raining when we entered Aransas WMA. We noticed a Belted Kingfisher on a wire. Dagger Point is infested with groups of feral Hogs. We walked to a lookout point on the ocean and a group of black Hogs were coming down the beach toward us. We drove further and spooked another gang of porcine marauders by the road. These feral hogs are wild boar hybridized with domestic hogs. They root around in gardens and planted fields, and they multiply.

Feral Hog

   It was still raining when we made it to Corpus Christi. We ate at a great restaurant called Gaido's. I had stuffed Shrimp and Berry had the Mahi-mahi. The next morning we left early (6am) to go to the waste treatment place in Port Aransas. In the back is a fresh water pond with a birding boardwalk and a tower. There was one other birder there and the place was hopping with birdic activity. We woke up a Common Moorhen as we entered the park. We saw lots of Redheads and Northern Pintails spread out on the water. The Cormorants were perched on a structure in the water to the left. The birding tower was the best place to bird from, but at 6am on a wooden tower above a swamp during the windy winter would admittedly be a stretch for most people.

   We helped the other birder identify a Black Crowned Night Heron standing on the reeds next to the water, then after the birder left we found a beautiful juvenile Black Crowned Night Heron perched atop the reeds near the boardwalk. He was very difficult to see due to his excellent camouflaging plumage. I watched a descending Great Egret land clumsily in the reeds nest to the juvenile Night Heron which squawked and flapped its wings, thus revealing itself to me.

Robert

photos courtesy of ghoffman, everwonder.com, christopher

Just so cute...

   Here are some photographs of that group of White Ibis' (Eudocimus albus) that we saw at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge. I took the pictures from about fifteen feet away.

   These beautiful birds have huge, red, down-curved beaks. Their eyes are blue. The juveniles are tinged with tannish brown.

Robert

photos courtesy of rfowler

Galveston State Park to Port Lavaca, Texas

   The sea breezes from the Gulf warmed things up appreciably. We still bundled against the wind, but the weather is really much more pleasant. There is a huge observation tower inside Galveston State Park. We walked to the ocean, then installed ourselves in this tower to watch the action below. We saw a Loggerhead Shrike perched in a thorny bush.

   Berry stopped in another parking lot and we feasted on a long line of shorebirds dozing on the beach. There were several Long Billed Dowitchers plodding around in the marsh. We always enjoy seeing the Long Billed Curlew with it's very long, deeply curved beak. We compared the handsome, colorful Royal Terns with the tiny Forster's Tern and the gigantic Caspian Tern. Great fun.

Sandhill Crane

   Our theater of operations in the afternoon moved to Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge. Here we got the Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja), an amazing bird with a spoon shaped bill, a pair of Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) (we had seen them in Nebraska), and Lincoln's Sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii), a life bird for us.

Roseate Spoonbill

• Golden Plover
  
• Piping Plover
  
• Snowy Plover
  
• Willett
  
• Sanderling
  
• Brown Pelican
  
• Broad Winged Hawk
  
• Osprey
  
• Long Billed Dowitcher
  
• Loggerhead Shrike
  
• American White
  
• Great Blue Heron
  
• Northern Mockingbird
  
• Great Egret
  
• White Tailed Kite
  
• American Kestrel
  
• Belted Kingfisher
  
• Reddish Egret
  
• Long Billed Curlew
  
• Little Blue Heron
  
• Herring Gull
  
• Royal Tern
  
• Forster's Tern
  
• Caspian Tern
  
• Double Crested Cormorant
  
• Laughing Gull
  
• Red Breasted Merganser
  
• Sandhill Crane
  
• Roseate Spoonbill
  
• Ring Necked Ducks
  
• Rock Dove
  
• Northern Harrier
  
• Turkey Vulture
  
• Anhinga
  
• Common Grackle
  
• Ground Dove
  
• Western Meadowlark
  
• Pied Billed Grebe
  
• Ring Necked Duck
  
• Red Bellied Woodpecker
  
• Lincoln's Sparrow
  
• Red Tail Hawk
  
• Ruddy Turnstone
  
• Killdeer
  
• Baird's Sandpiper
  
• White Ibis
  
• Green Wing Teal
  
• Hooded Merganser
  
• Northern Shoveler
  
• Crested Caracara
  

   You have to imagine what we are doing. We are dressed warmly, standing next to our car on a levee in a watery marsh, staring into our spotting scope and debating the identification and behavior of birds using a bird guide. The sign in the park indicated the presence of alligators, but it is late autumn/early winter and the alligators are hiding. We never saw one.

Lincoln's Sparrow

   Please note that we have added new birds to our Life List on the right. This has been a terrific vacation so far.

Robert

photo courtesy of tunderhill, mmacpherson, platurrett

From Port Arthur to Anahuac NWR

   What a wonderful day. We bundled against the cold and the wind and birded the marshes along the coast between Louisiana and Texas. I got a little dehydrated, getting blown by the wind in the cold, but we had a terrific time. This has been an amazing vacation so far. We observed three more "life birds", filling in a lot of the blanks from our first trip down the Texas Coastal Birding Trail five years ago.

   Our first new bird was the White Tailed Kite (Elanus leucurus). It was a bird we almost missed. We almost did not go down that road because of a smoldering fire in the underbrush. And that road was a dead end. When Berry first saw it, she thought it was a gull. There were two of them perched on a wire next to the road. The hooked bill and the characteristic feather pattern are diagnostic.

White Tailed Kite

   The second surprise was the Lesser Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens caerulescens). There was a large flock of them in a canal and an adjacent field, but right in front of them were a couple of the cutest red-beaked blue-eyed White Ibis' that you'd ever see, sunning themselves next to our car. We could not get our scope off them. It was only after we took the time to photograph and scope the White Ibis' exhaustively that we finally got around to wondering about the purple tinged morph of the Snow Goose.

Lesser Snow Goose

   The pair of Mottled Ducks we saw were the third "life birds" for today. They are identified by the color of the bill. The male has a sharp yellow bill; the female has an olive bill which makes her less obtrusive. The male and female were together when we saw them, making identification easy. We were interrupted here by a huge truck passing by our rental car and several Cormorants diving in the canal next to them.

Mottled Duck

  

• Brown Pelican
  
• American White
  
• Red Winged Blackbird
  
• American Robin
  
• Eastern Screech Owl
  
• Boat Tailed Grackle
  
• Killdeer
  
• Broad Winged Hawk
  
• Willett
  
• Great Egret
  
• Red Shouldered Hawk
  
• Great Blue Heron
  
• White Tailed Kite
  
• Osprey
  
• American Kestrel
  
• Belted Kingfisher
  
• Herring Gull
  
• Royal Tern
  
• Common Grackle
  
• Semi-Palmated Sandpiper
  
• Sanderling
  
• Ring Billed Gull
  
• Laughing Gull
  
• White Ibis with juveniles
  
• Northern Harrier
  
• Red Tailed Hawk
  
• Eastern Phoebe
  
• Turkey Vulture
  
• Western Meadowlark
  
• Snowy Egret
  
• Double Crested Cormorant
  
• Greater Yellowlegs
  
• Pied Billed Grebe
  
• Lesser Scaup
  
• American Coot
  
• Ruddy Turnstone
  
• Ground Dove
  
• Mottled Duck
  
• Killdeer
  
• Lesser Snow Goose
  

  

Robert

photo courtesy of rwolf, jpippen, rhamaguchi

Another Life Bird

   Last night the emergency announcement system told us to leave the hotel in an orderly manner. We dressed and walked calmly to the stairs, but we smelled smoke in the hallway. After a short time, the Dallas fire department came with sirens blazing, then the manager sheepishly admitted that it was burnt popcorn in a microwave on the ninth floor.

   We drove out of Dallas and visited several lakes in the foresty part of eastern Texas. This is "close" to where we saw the Red Cockaded Woodpecker several years ago. Tall hardwood forest turning into a huge pine forest just north of the coast. Berry and I search for birdically interesting habitats, places with clean water, food that birds like to eat, and shelter from the elements, where birds would find it amenable. This led us to a reservoir called Cedar Creek.

   We counted umpteen American Coot on the surface of the reservoir. Then Berry spotted a Lesser Scaup. When she saw another bird, we both thought it was a Redhead. But this one had a perfectly black beak. I looked in the Sibley's and was amazed to identify the unknown duck as a Canvasback. This was a "life bird" for us. A life bird is one which we had never seen before. The list to the right of this post is our "Life List". Please note that we have added this new bird at the bottom of that list. We are delighted.

Canvasback (Aythya valisineria)

   We birded several other lakes on our way south, Athens Lake, Lake Palestine, Sam Rayburn Reservoir and really enjoyed poking down some infrequently used country lanes on our way to Beaumont, Texas. Here is a list of the birds that we saw.

• Turkey Vulture
  
• Lesser Scaup
  
• American Coot
  
• Canvasback
  
• Field Sparrow
  
• Rock Dove
  
• English Sparrow
  
• Black Vulture
  
• Swamp Sparrow
  
• European Starling
  
• Northern Mockingbird
  
• American Crow
  
• Great Egret
  
• Red Tail Hawk (white morph)
  
• female Northern Cardinal
  
• White Throated Sparrow
  
• Carolina Chickadee
  
• Killdeer
  
• Eastern Phoebe
  
• Bald Eagle
  
• Mallard
  
• Yellow Rumped Warbler
  
• American Robin
  
• Eastern Bluebird
  

   In addition to birds, we observed two coyotes feeding on carrion by the road, two gray squirrels munching nuts beside the road, and two white tailed deer dodging our car.

Robert

photo courtesy of jkennedy

Otters and an Osprey

   After my workshop in downtown Dallas, Berry met me, circling the parking lot in a gray rental car. It was blisteringly cold and the wind was whipping around the building. At least it was not raining.

   We loaded up and went to nearby Lake Ray Hubbard, to see what we might see. We set up the scope and brought out the bins, found the Sibley's bird book and started our Trip List of birds. And when it was over, we had seen a handsome collection of birds. The only down-side was that I found it difficult to tolerate the cold weather.

Osprey

• American Kestrel, male
  
• Great Tailed Grackle
  
• Pied Billed Grebe
  
• Osprey
  
• Rock Dove, brown variant
  
• American Coot
  
• a domestic goose (anser cygnoides)
  
• Canada Goose
  
• American Crow
  
• Snow Goose
  
• Mallard
  
• Killdeer
  

   Berry caught sight of several River Otters, diving in and out of the water, and hiding under the large rocks on the levee. They could squeeze between the rocks and nothing could follow them there.

River Otter

Robert

photos courtesy of trapperran, prpdnews

Robins from the North

   Berry and I looked out the window and saw a whole flock of American Robins (Turdus Migratorius) feeding in the backyard. These arrive every winter, having fled the frigid icy north.

Winter Visitor

   She and I are heading to the Gulf Coast in a couple of days. It will be great to get back to Texas. We haven't birded there in about five years.

Robert

photo courtesy of pixdaus.com