Willacy County, 5/11/08

I made another run out to Willacy County to see if I could add any migrants to my Willacy County list. Not to many passerines, but enough new birds to bring my county list up to 200 exactly. I doubt too many people have seen Purple Gallinule in Willacy County.



This singing Botteri's Sparrow was new for the county list. I was pretty sure it was Botteri's before it sang as it was much browner than a Cassin's Sparrow.



Here's some photogenic shorebirds at Port Mansfield. First a Wilson's Plover and then a Ruddy Turnstone.

Piratic Flycatcher at Pollywog Pond, 5/5/08

Satuday while doing the Central Coast division of the GCBO's Great Texas Bird Count, Gene Blacklock, one of Tezas's all time great bird experts found a Piratic Flycatcher on the trail into Pollywog Pond near Corpus Christi. Unfortunately my computer was down and I didn't get the word till late Sunday. When I saw on Texbirds that the bird was still present on Monday morning I made the decision to go for it. This necessitated sneaking out of work an hour and a half early and making the two plus hour drive and finding the bird before it got dark. It didn't help that I misread the directions and spend nearly two hours trying to find Pollywog Pond. I finally got there at 7 PM and only one car was present. Down the trail I found Jack Revare from Kansas City who had been looking for the bird for an hour. He pointed at the famous mullberry tree where the bird had spent the last two days. I looked up and there he was! There is only half a dozen records for Piratic Flycatcher north of Mexico so this was a good tick for the ABA list and the Texas list. Unfortunately the bird was never seen again after we left.

Big Day!

Saturday was the inaugral effort for the Gas Saver division of the Great Texas Birding Classic. In an attemp to create a venue for a more environmentally friendly birding big day, Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Gulf Coast Birding Observatory initiated a division where birders must cover a minimum of fifty miles and scoring is determined by number of birds seen per mile. Normally teams cover several hundred miles in an attempt to see as many species as possible. Well I'm proud to announce the winners are our own Weslaco "Slice of the Good Lifers" who scored 176 species in 52 miles to edge out John Arvin's GCBO Cuckoos who saw 167 species in 51 miles.

The winning effort garnered an award of $10,000 to be donated to an environmental cause, most probably Frontera Audubon Thicket in Weslaco. Here's the exhausted winning team as they scored #175 (Cape May Warbler) and #176 (Blackburnian Warbler) at the convertion center on South Parder Island. From left to right are Jim "Ears" Booker, Wayne "Frontera Director" Bartholomew, JD "rookie" Cortez, Martin "Valley Nature Center Director" Hagne and Antshrike.