Canada Goose at Estero Llano Grande, 7/3/15

 A couple of weeks ago Huck Hutchens and the gang found a Canada Goose right off the deck at Estero Llano Grande State Park.  This might not seem like a big deal but it was a new Hidalgo County bird for all of us who keep county lists.  "Canada" type geese are very rare in the Rio Grande Valley in winter and one in the summer is unprecedented.  I saw some Cackling Geese years ago at the Sugar House Pond but this was my first Valley Canada Goose.  Luckily it was a pretty big one and easy to ID.  Could it be an escaped bird? Hard to say but it only hung around that afternoon and was never seen again.

Yellow-green Vireo at National Butterfly Center, 6/24/15

I'm a little late in posting this one.  The spring and early summer has been great for butterflies so I was checking them out at the National Butterfly Center when I distantly heard the "viree-ee...viree-oh' song of a Yellow-green Vireo.  I chased it down several times before I finally got some poor shots of it in the tepaguajes west of the bird feeding station.  A couple of other birders got to see it but it was never reported again.  Since then another was photographed at Quinta Mazatlan and a third at the more expected Resaca de la Palma.