Southern Lapwing in Mercedes, 4/14/24

After an unprecedented fall and winter birding season in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, this spring has continued with more amazing rare birds.  Last Sunday it was the Mexican Violetear on South Padre Island and two days ago it was a Flame-colored Tanager at Quinta Mazatlan.  And then yesterday, a resident at the Llano Grande Resort photographed a strange bird while playing golf.  He showed it to a local birder at the resort and eventually the ID was determined to be a Southern Lapwing.  

According to Steve Howell's "Rare Birds of North America" there are only three previous records of  Southern Lapwing in the United States,  reports from 2006 in Maryland and Florida with the other a long staying bird in the fall of 2022 in Michegan.  Southern Lapwings, a plover species, are an abundant shorebird throught much of South America and in recent years have invaded Central America with a current small population on the Pacific Coast of Chiapas.  They frequent large grassy spaces like cattle pastures and soccer pitches and are thought to be expanding northward as tropical forests are cut.  I saw my lifer on a soccer pitch in Gamboa, Panama.  Southern Lapwing is a species that was expeced to occur some day in Texas although I thought we would have seen more records from Mexico.  Northern Lapwing is a Eurasian plover that occasionally strays to the northeastern United States.  Other species of lapwings occur across Africa, southern Asia and Australia.

Anyway, I couldn't get away yesterday evening to see the bird so I showed up bright and early on the levee ourside the golf couse in Mercedes and there were already a few birders scoping the distant Southern Lapwing.  At 100+ yards these are not great photos.  I may go back for more if the bird hangs around.

This Southern Lapwing is thought to be a the northern cayennensis subspecies.  Here are much better photos of the similar chilensis subspecies I took last fall in Argentina.

Anyway this is my 416th species for Hidalgo County and more importantly my 600th species for Texas.  That includes a few species not on the official Texas list:  four parrots species, Egyptian Goose, the not accepted duo of Tropical Mockingbird and Striped Sparrow, and the probably not accepted Cattle Tyrant.  I've seen dirtier lists.