The past few days I've seen some really nice photos of the first Texas record Southern Lapwing at the Llano Grande golf course in Mercedes. So I ran over this morning to try for some better shots. The bird was much closer than it was the other day, right in front of the clubhouse, but cloudy conditions made still photography tough. Lapwings are basically large plovers belonging to the subfamily Vanellinae. This Southern Lapwing is Vanellus chilensis of the cayennensis subspecies.
There were a few photographers present when I arrived. One of them was making a video of the bird through a Swarovski spotting scope with the big 115 mm objective lense. I thought he looked familiar and I said Hi and introduced myself. Damn it was Clay Taylor who I have known for many years. I haven't seen him in a few years and he was wearing a cap so that will be my excuse. Anyway Clay is a mainstay at all the birding festivals as he is Swarovski Optik's North American Representative.
Clay was guiding a guy from Tucson who turned out to be Mike Terenzoni, astronomer at the University of Arizona's Flandrau Planetarium. Mike commented that he would like to see American Golden Plover after Clay called a flyover. I told them that I had a couple of dozen of them at the Sugar House pond a few days ago and Clay stated that in his many years of coming to the Valley he had never been to the Sugar House. So off we went.
Normally this time of year the effluent pond at the Sugar House is full of water from the winter sugar cane refining season. But the Sugar House has closed down so water is dropping as we continue our dry spring. Shorebirding usually season starts in early July with adults returning after breeding in the Arctic, but this year we are early and getting migrants on their way north.
Migrant Franklin's Gulls are on their way to nest in prairie potholes uo north. I like the Semipalmated Plover photobomb. The gulls rounded wingtips with lots of white make them eazy to separate from our local Laughing Gulls.
Speaking of Semipalms, there were at least ten of these nomally uncommon in Hidalgo County small plovers.
The big flock of Fulvous Whistling-Ducks continued in the distant corner with a few Roseate Spoonbills.
Lots of peeps, these are mostly Least Sandpipers.
A few Hudsonian Godwits remained but were hard to photograph. The black and white tails make these large shorebirds easy to ID in flight.
Overall things were about the same as a few days ago. We got Mike some distant American Golden-Plovers. Clay was complaining about having to go to Vienna to Swarovski corporate headquarters for meetings but he enjoyed his visit to the Sugar House. Life is good.
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