Piping Plover Mob at South Padre Island, 10-30-24

After a so-so day of looking for migrant passerines at South Padre Island, I decided to run up to Beach Access #4 and look for interesting stuff for iNaturalist.  I wandered around the dunes a bit and photographed a few well camoflaged Keeled Earless Lizards and then walked along the beach.

There were a few feeding Piping Plovers and Sanderlings along the water's edge.

This Sanderling has found something good.  I thinks it's an isopod known as a sand flea.  Fishermen like to use them for bait.

A couple walking ahead of me scared up a flock of shorebirds.  At the time I thought they were probably Sanderlings.

I continued photographing the Piping Plovers and Sanderlings and then just in front of me I found the flock of "Sanderlings" hunkered down in the sand out of the wind.  Except they weren't Sanderlings.  It was a big flock of Piping Plovers.  I counted them twice and came up with a total of seventy.  Piping Plover is a threatened species with a world population estimated to be about 8000 as of 2020.  This flock would be of the midwestern subspecies.  Recent habitat protection programs have helped increase their numbers but it's tough when you're outnumbered by 8.2 billion jackass humans.

There were a few warblers at the Convention Center water feature.  Best was this Magnolia Warbler.

Here's a Nashville Warbler showing it's usally hidden rusty crown.

Winter birds are on the way with Yellow-rumped and Orange-crowned Warblers.

Lincon's Sparrows are showing up.

Still waiting fort a real cold front to push down the last of the migrants.

Black Skimmer at Falcon Lake, 10/18/24

Well after the major faux pas on my last post, I quit birding and switched to bugs.  Just kidding.  But lately I have been entering a lot of stuff into iNaturalist and trying to extend my expertise into the insect world.  I have found native bees and tiger beetles to be a fun challege.  So I've let my birding lapse a bit.  

But a few days a go I ran up to Salineno and Falcon Reservoir to check the bugs up there and while looking for tiger beetles along the lake shore my attention was drawn to a flock of Forster's Terns.  I was hoping to find a Common Tern but they were all Forster's.  There were also a few Laughing Gulls and what seemed to be a pale gull.  I figured it was probably a Ring-billed and fired a few shots with the camera.  What's up with the big beak?  Was it carrying a fish?  I looked through the binocs and realized it was an immature Black Skimmer.  That's a really good bird up there away from the coast.  I was on the Zapata County side past the boat launch and so it was a new bird for the county list.  It looped around a bit and may have crossed into Starr County but I'm not sure.  Anyway it landed a ways up the shoreling so I walked up and god photos.

Here are some of the Forster's Terns.

Wow, that was pretty cool.  I went back to looking at tigerbeetles and found several of the less common S-banded Tiger Beetles.  Though only a little more than a half inch long, these little predators are always running around and raising hell.

As I was leaving I saw a bird sitting on a stump that I though might be a phoebe but binoc views proved it to be an immature White-crowned Sparrow.  After I got poor shots through the windshield, it flew to a small huisache about a hundred feet away.  I slowly walked towards it and was surprised to see it not fly out.  I was pishing lightly and got within about twenty feet of the sparrow.  White-crowned Sparrows are always a good bird in the Valley and this one was another Zapata County lifer for me.

Well I was on a roll so Idecided to check out the big purple marsh fleabane patch just below me for butterflies.  It was cloudy so not a lot of butterflies were out but there were plenty of pollinating bees, wasps and beetles.  I got lucky and picked up two lifer bees.  I think this is a male Megachile sidalceae.  

I've become enamored with cuckoo bees.  Like the old world cuckoos that lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species, there are also kleptoparasitic bees.  This one, another lifer, is Coelioxys texanus, the Texas Cucko Leafcutter Bee.  This is a male.  The female would lay its egg in the underground nest of one of the Leafcutter Bee species, possible the one above.

You never know what you're going to find.