Early February stuff

I started out February with a trip to the National Butterfly Center.  The wintering Painted Bunting was easy to find.  I wonder if the green bird from last winter is this same male.

The wintering Western Tanager has not been easy to find.  It took me about four hours to finally encounter it by the water feature behind the visitor's center.  

Honey and I made a run over to Willacy County on Saturday.  A flock of about 400 Snow Geese made the trip worthwhile.

Searching through the flock I came up with a couple of Ross's Geese.

As we approached Port Mansfield, I glimpsed a brown sparrow-like bird sitting on the wire of a gated entrance to a ranch.  I made a quick u-turn and found my sparrow to be a Lark Bunting.  My first for Willacy County, #279.

We checked the coastal areas of Port Mansfield but not too much was going on.  Best bird was this Bonaparte's Gull in the boat basin.

This gull was troublesome for me.  I guess it's just a Herring Gull.  I caught a brief look at the primaries while it was in flight and they seemed to have the requisite pale patch but I would like better looks at it.

Back home we got our first Purple Martin of the spring.

And a female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker passed through the yard yesterday.  We didn't even get one last year for the yard list.

Allen's Hummingbirds in Harlingen, 1/31/18

A week ago Kelly Bryan was in the RGV banding hummingbirds at Stephanie Bilodeau and Justin LeClaire's place just outside of Harlingen.  Among the surprisingly large number of winter hummers was an Allen's Hummingbird.  This would be a new species for me in Cameron County so I made arrangements to spend some time in their yard watching the feeders.  It took a few hours but there was so much action that time passed quickly.  Here he is, #402 for me in Cameron County.

A second male Selasphours went unbanded by Kelly but I guessed it was also an Allen's Hummingbird.  Later Justin and Stephanie got good views of the spread tail showing the lanceolate R2 tail feather.

This female Selaphorus would normally be assumed to be a Rufous Hummingbird but apparently that assumption doesn't hold anymore.  I used to identify all the Selasphorus as Rufous but Allen's Hummingbird is turning out to not be that rare.  I don't know if anything can be gleaned from the spread tail shot.

Meanwhile there were also a couple of male Black-chinned Hummingbirds.

And a young male Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

Not sure what this female Archilochus is.

Kelly banded four Buff-bellied Hummingbirds.

Pretty good hummingbird diversity for the Valley in January.