Sparrow Road, FM 2221, 1/4/11

A couple of days ago I covered Sparrow Road, FM2221 northwest of La Joya for the Bentsen/Anzalduas CBC. With the drought and a paucity of birds it was pretty boring, but I did manage ten species of sparrows. I liked this plucky little Vesper Sparrow.



Lark Buntings winter in small numbers in the Valley and are hard to find on a CBC.



White-crowned Sparrow is another tough one.



Grasshopper Sparrows are not a sure thing either.



Northern Bobwhite 14
Double-crested Cormorant 30
Turkey Vulture 3
White-tailed Kite 2
Northern Harrier 2
Harris's Hawk 2
Red-tailed Hawk 1
Crested Caracara 4
American Kestrel 4
Peregrine Falcon 1
Sora 1
Rock Pigeon 50
Eurasian Collared-Dove 2
Mourning Dove 335
Common Ground-Dove 10
Golden-fronted Woodpecker 4
Ladder-backed Woodpecker 1
Eastern Phoebe 1
Tropical Kingbird 2
Loggerhead Shrike 2
White-eyed Vireo 2
Green Jay 4
Horned Lark 3
Verdin 10
Cactus Wren 2
Bewick's Wren 4
House Wren 9
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 7
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 9
Northern Mockingbird 28
Long-billed Thrasher 2
Curve-billed Thrasher 6
Orange-crowned Warbler 19
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) 1
Olive Sparrow 2
Cassin's Sparrow 8
Vesper Sparrow 18
Lark Sparrow 16
Black-throated Sparrow 5
Lark Bunting 7
Savannah Sparrow 113
Grasshopper Sparrow 3
Lincoln's Sparrow 7
White-crowned Sparrow 1
Northern Cardinal 11
Pyrrhuloxia 49
Red-winged Blackbird 335
Western Meadowlark 5
Great-tailed Grackle 50
Brown-headed Cowbird 6
House Sparrow 2

Happy New Year!

I got a late start this morning after enduring last night's rocket barrage as the neighborhood celebrated the new year. I am thankful no bullets came through the roof! I went over to Estero Llano Grande to start the new county year list. Good warblers included Tropical Parula and Black-throated Gray among the eight species I saw. Then it was the sit and wait game for the White-throated Trush. After two hours it flew in for a brief drink and a poor photo. This is the fifth one I have seen in the Valley.



After going home for lunch and a nap, I ran back over to the flood channel south of the park to look for a couple of things I had seen on the CBC earlier this week. The Yellow-headed Blackbirds were still around.



And after a bit of tromping around at the Short-eared Owl field, a couple popped up for good views and a year tick.



Then in a pond by the Llano Grande golf course I saw a Double-cresed Cormornat struggling to swallow a very spiny plecostomous. The common aquarium suckermouth catfish from South America seems to be common here in the waterways of the RGV.