Sunday, November 7, 2010

Great birding this weekend!

Yesterday I spent the day birding in Willacy County hoping to find a Golden-crowned Kinglet for my county list. Well, I didn't find one but I checked out the Mountain Plover spot east of Sebastian and with a bit of effort found eight of the little tan-colored ghosts. They are so hard to see as they run, popping up and down, between the furrows in the very large plowed fields. Here's a poor pic.

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Meanwhile I had left my phone at home and didn't know Mary Gustafson was looking at a Winter Wren at South Padre Island and didn't find out till I got home. So I got Honey out of bed (on a morning when we should have been using our extra daylight savings hour) and we ran out to the Island. Honey with her good karma found the Winter Wren first but it took me a while. Its voice indicates it's the newly split eastern species called the... uhm... Winter Wren. The western one is called the Pacific Wren. Anyway it's a new one for my Cameron County list.

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There was also a Northern Flicker which is very hard to find in the Valley. It was my second for the county.

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The cute little Golden-crowned Kinglet was still there.

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After good luck at the Convention Center, Honey and I ran over to the late Barbara Kennet's house to look for the possible Anna's Hummingbird found by Scarlet Colley. Well, it looks like a good female to me. Two new county birds in the sme day!

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Here's the SPI Convention Center list.

Pied-billed Grebe 2
Brown Pelican X
Great Blue Heron 3
Great Egret 1
Little Blue Heron 1
Tricolored Heron 1
Reddish Egret 1
Clapper Rail 1
Common Moorhen 2
Black-bellied Plover 5
Semipalmated Plover 8
Piping Plover 5
Killdeer 2
Black-necked Stilt 1
Greater Yellowlegs X
Willet X
Lesser Yellowlegs X
Sanderling X
Least Sandpiper X
Dunlin X
Laughing Gull X
Herring Gull 1
Forster's Tern 1
Royal Tern X
White-winged Dove 2
Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted) 1
Eastern Phoebe 1
Couch's Kingbird 1
Blue-headed Vireo 1
House Wren 3
Winter Wren 1
Sedge Wren 1
Marsh Wren 5
Golden-crowned Kinglet 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 3
Hermit Thrush 2
American Robin 1
Gray Catbird 3
Northern Mockingbird X
Long-billed Thrasher 1
Orange-crowned Warbler 2
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) 2
Black-throated Green Warbler 1
Wilson's Warbler 1
Red-winged Blackbird X
Great-tailed Grackle X

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