Ron Weeks came down a few days ago to work on his Willacy County list. He has about fifteen Texas counties with over 300 species of birds seen and is just a few away from that total in Willacy County. So we made a run up the beach on South Padre Island to see if we could add a few. My total is at 292 and I'm just parely staying ahead of Ron. Well he wound up with a distant Brown Booby at the Port Mansfield Channel jetty which was new for him. I was right next to him and think I got on the bird but it was very distant through the scope and I failed to see many field marks so I'm not counting it. My best bird was this striking adult Lesser Black-backed Gull. At the time I thought it might be a new county bird for me but turns out I had already seen one.
Se saw about a dozen Common Terns which are uncommon down here, especially in breeding plumage.
Weirdest bird of the day goes to this misplaced female Cinammon Teal. We did see a couple of migrant teal flocks that we called Blue-winged.
Ron was wanting a Red Knot for Willacy County but the only one we saw was in Cameron County.
Otherwise is was just the usual stuff like the ultra long billed Long-billed Curlew.
Plenty of Brown Pelicans.
The only Herring Gull was this adult.
A nice day with a very drivable beach for a change. Tomorrow I'm off for a solo trip to Agentina. I haven't been out of the country since our pre covid trip to Australia in 2019. It's gonna be cold in Tierra del Fuego. Hope I can find some birds.
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