Mangrove Cuckoo at South Padre Island, 5-2-24

I've been busy with birds and butterflies lately and neglecting real life stuff, so today it was time to hunker down and get some chores done.  But then that darn WhatsApp when off.  Javi Gonzalez and crew at the South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center had found a Mangrove Cuckoo.  Now I've seen Mangrove Cuckoos before in the Florida Keys and in Mexico but never in Texas.  I remember looking for the one at Frontera Audubon in Weslaco many years ago.  Then there was another long ago at Sabal Palm and Scarlet Collie found one in Port Isabel.  That's three swings and three misses.  Then more recently there was the one on inaccessible state property on the Arroyo Colorado and finally last year a late afternoon bird near Rio Hondo that I didn't chase and a very coopertive bird in Galveston that I should have chased.  Mangrove Cuckoo has long been my #1 nemesis bird in Texas.

So after a brief discussion with myself about how vagrant Mangrove Cuckoos are notoriously difficult to refind and how I had stuff to do, I told myself to shut up and drove out to the Island.  When I arrived at the SPI Birding Center, birders were already on the glorious Mangrove Cuckoo.  My first shot was the classic cuckoo pose, eye ball peering through vegetation.

Mangrove Cuckoos belong to the genus Coccyzus along with our common Yellow-billed and Black-billed Cuckoos and the rare austral migrant Dark-billed Cuckoo.  They have this distintive manner of sitting perfectly still with there head slowly moving around, surveying the situation, much like trogons do.  And like our other cuckoos are big fans of caterpillars.

This Mangrove Cuckoo is from Mexico as evidenced by the rich buffy almost fulvous underparts.  Most birders get their Mangrove Cuckoo in the Florida Keys where they are much more pale.  Here's one I photographed on Key Largo.

This Mangrove Cucko is my 602nd species for Texas and 435th for Cameron County.  And tomorrow night I have an appointment to score another ABA and Texas lifer.  Stay tuned.

Black Noddy at the Port Aransas Jetty, 4/29/24

A Black Noddy was photographed on Friday afternoon on the Port Aransas Jetty.  I was unable to run up there over the weekend but got up dark and early on Monday and made the 200 mile drive.  When I arrived there was David Bradford from Houston with whom I have been battling for some time in the Texas eBird rankings.  We made the long walk out and eventually found it feeding with Black Terns near the tip of the jetty.  Fortunately it came back to the jetty to preen providing great photo opps.

Black Noddy is one of five noddy tern species belonging to the genus Anous.  They differ from most terns in that they lack a deeply forked tail and feed by picking from the water's surface rather than diving.  Noddies are found in tropical waters and usually breed on remote islands.  There are seven subspecies of Black Noddy found around the world.  This individual is only the fourth to be found in Texas.  Usually birders visit the Dry Tortugas off the Florida Keys to add this species to their ABA lists where they have been rare but regular in the colony of nesting Brown Noddies.

Anyway this was a lifer for me bringing my world total to 2665 species.  It was species #601 for my Texas list.  Fifteen years ago I got to see my only Brown Noddy from this same jetty.  This was before I had a good camera or scope.  Here's a very distant digiscope view.

This Black Noddy has pretty severe feather wear and is probably infested with feather mites.  It seems to be frequently coming back to the jetty to rest about feeding bouts.  I'm guessing flight is difficult with the ragged flight feathers.  I don't know if they ever get better once they are in this state.  It seems unusually tame but that is common among all the noddy species.  I hope it lasts a while as it's a pretty cool bird.