Parrot Insanity in Weslaco, 2/4/15

This evening, a little before 6 PM, I drove into our carport and stepped outside to be welcomed by the raucous screams of Red-crowned Parrots.  The past week there has been a flock of about twenty flying over the house at about this same time and a couple of days ago the flock had grown to forty.  But this was a lot more than that.  I ran into the house for the camera and back outside and started shooting.  It was a little dark for good photography.  If I had been smart I would have bumped up the ISO.

I was not surprised to find a couple of Red-lored Parrots in the bunch.

At first I thought this was a Lilac-crowned Parrots but now I think it's a young Red-lored.  Comments are welcome.

I think this is a Lilac-crowned but I'm not sure.  Maybe it's a young Red-lored.  The ID of Red-crowned and Lilac-crowned Parrot in Mexico is not a problem as Red-crowns occur in NE Mexico while Lilac-crowns occur on the west coast. But here in the RGV they can occur in flocks together which makes things confusing as female Red-crowns have the red crowned reduced to just the front with a blue crown.  I think a lot of these birds go misidentified as Lilac-crowned Parrot.

I counted 120 in the neighbors budding cottonwood and then saw others coming in while more were feeding in a fruiting palm.  At about 6:10 they decide it was time to go and the whole flock exploded from the trees with a cacophony of screams and squawks.  They circled overhead a couple of times before heading west.  I counted 192 in this photo.