Delta Lake, 12/14/17

After forty years of doing Christmas Bird Counts I've been getting a little tired of them lately.  But J.D. was short-handed with the La Sal Vieja count so I agreed to go and cover my old area at Delta Lake.  Turned out to be a cool, windless, cloudy day; great for birding but crappy for photography.  I spend nine hours covering the county park and the resort and finished with a respectable total of 82 species.  Nothing fantastic but fun none the less.  I got my usual Yellow Warblers, the only reliable wintering location I know of in the country.

Yellow-throated Warblers always winter here but my total of thirteen seemed unusually high.

My best bird was probably this Clay-colored Thrush.  I don't ever recall seeing one up here before.  I don't know if it was new for the count.

Plenty of Vermillion Flycatchers as usual in the park.

It's always a treat to get a Merlin.

Here's the list.

Delta Lake (LTC 008), Hidalgo, Texas, US

Dec 14, 2017 7:30 AM - 4:30 PM
Protocol: Traveling
3.0 mile(s)
Comments: 8 hrs on foot, 1 hr by car, 2 miles by foot, 1 mile by car
82 species (+4 other taxa)

Black-bellied Whistling-Duck (fulgens) 150
Snow Goose 25
Muscovy Duck (Domestic type) 1
Blue-winged Teal 10
Northern Shoveler 4
Gadwall 4
Mottled Duck (Gulf Coast) 28
Northern Pintail 40
Canvasback 21
Redhead 22 yup
Ring-necked Duck 100
Lesser Scaup 300
Bufflehead 1
Ruddy Duck (Ruddy) 8
Pied-billed Grebe 2
Neotropic Cormorant 100
Double-crested Cormorant 50
Anhinga 4
American White Pelican 3
Great Blue Heron (Blue form) 16
Great Egret 7
Snowy Egret 2
Black Vulture 6
Turkey Vulture 75
Osprey (carolinensis) 2
White-tailed Kite 1
Northern Harrier 2
Sharp-shinned Hawk 1
Cooper's Hawk 1
Harris's Hawk 1
Red-shouldered Hawk 1
Red-tailed Hawk 4
Sora 1
Common Gallinule (American) 3
American Coot (Red-shielded) 94
Sandhill Crane 1
Killdeer 20
Spotted Sandpiper 3
Greater Yellowlegs 1
Laughing Gull 20
Ring-billed Gull 10
Caspian Tern 3
Eurasian Collared-Dove 8
Inca Dove 8
White-tipped Dove 1
Mourning Dove 8
Ringed Kingfisher 1
Belted Kingfisher 2
Golden-fronted Woodpecker (Northern) 15
Ladder-backed Woodpecker 5
Crested Caracara 3
American Kestrel 3
Merlin 1
Black Phoebe 2
Eastern Phoebe 7
Vermilion Flycatcher 5
Great Kiskadee 15
Couch's Kingbird 3
Tropical/Couch's Kingbird 1
Loggerhead Shrike 1
White-eyed Vireo 3
Blue-headed Vireo 2
Green Jay (Green) 2
Tree Swallow 150 Blue above, white below wheeling over the lake. Counted and estimated
Black-crested Titmouse 2
House Wren (Northern) 27
Marsh Wren 2
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 8
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 30
Clay-colored Thrush 1
Northern Mockingbird 12
European Starling 34
Orange-crowned Warbler 50
Common Yellowthroat 50
Yellow Warbler (Northern) 3 Three different birds photographed.
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) 54
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon's) 2
Yellow-throated Warbler 13 Amazing total. Ten on west side and three on east. About twice my normal CBC total.
Wilson's Warbler 1
Lincoln's Sparrow 5
Swamp Sparrow 3
Northern Cardinal 2
Red-winged Blackbird 10
Great-tailed Grackle 100
blackbird sp. 200
House Sparrow 40

Great Day at South Padre Island, 11/19/17

A good cold front blew in last night and deep down I knew I should be out at South Padre Island looking for rare birds.  But I got up a little late and decided it might be good to stay in our yard and hope for something good.  Well, I spent an enjoyable morning with lots of raptors and TV's and a Yellow-throated Warbler but nothing outstanding.  Then at 11:30 I discovered I had missed a text saying Brad McKinney had just found a Dark-eyed Junco at the Convention Center at South Padre Island.  Dang!  I should have found that bird.  And being that I needed that one for my Cameron County list, I raced right out there.  And when I arrived, there was the group looking at it in the water feature.  Dark-eyed Junco was my 399th Cameron County bird.

Also present at the same time was this Pine Siskin, only my second for the county.

And down below the siskin, scratching around in the dirt for seeds was this young White-throated Sparrow.  I see one of these almost annually at the Convention Center.

One more good out of range bird was this Brown Thrasher that has been around for a few weeks.

So my intuition was right and I should have gone to the Island.  And another cold front is approaching so we'll see if I learned anything by this.