Sugar House Pond, 8/8/23

I checked out the Sugar House Pond today.  With the past two months of no rain and 100 degree weather, water is drying up fast on this 40 acre effluent pond and it's shorebird season so there was a lot to see.  I needed to catch my bearings after popping up on the berm and being overwhelmed by thousands of shorebirds, but it didn't take me long to pick out a Willet.  There were at least five of these hard to find for Hidalgo County shorebirds.

A bit later I found my bird of the day, my fourth ever Marbled Godwit for Hidalgo County.

Then it was just a matter of scoping over the large flocks.  I picked out ten Semipalmated Plovers.

A lone Snowy Plover was a bird closer.

But the Black-bellied Plover was nearly a quarter mile away on the opposite side of the pond.

The rest of the nineteen species of shorebirds were more common species like this flock of Long-billed Dowitchers.

There were also hundreds of Stilt Sandpipers but I didn't get much in the way of photos today so here's one from ten days ago.

I only managed to find one Pectoral Sandpiper.  Here it is with a Lesser Yellowlegs and a couple of Wilson's Phalaropes.

It's about time to find a mega rare so I need to get back out there again this week.  In the mean time I will search though these photos and see if I missed anything.

Sugar House Pond (FM1425), Hidalgo, Texas, US

Aug 8, 2023 8:09 AM - 10:31 AM

Protocol: Traveling

0.2 mile(s)

38 species

Black-bellied Whistling-Duck  50

Fulvous Whistling-Duck  10

Mottled Duck  1

Common Gallinule  1

American Coot  50

Black-necked Stilt (Black-necked)  600    Five to one ratio with Avocets

American Avocet  122    Counted carefully through scope

Black-bellied Plover  2    Two breeding plumaged birds very distant from one another

Snowy Plover  1

Semipalmated Plover  10

Killdeer  20

Marbled Godwit  1

Stilt Sandpiper  1500    Five to one ratio with dowitchers

Baird's Sandpiper  2

Least Sandpiper  500

Buff-breasted Sandpiper  20

Semipalmated Sandpiper  3

Western Sandpiper  300    Lots of em

Long-billed Dowitcher  300

Wilson's Phalarope  500

Solitary Sandpiper  1

Greater Yellowlegs  5

Willet  5

Lesser Yellowlegs  200

Laughing Gull  1

Gull-billed Tern  2

Black Tern  250    Counted through scope

Snowy Egret  2

Tricolored Heron  1

Cattle Egret  3

White Ibis  57

White-faced Ibis  66    Counted thru scope

Roseate Spoonbill  1

Bank Swallow  5

Barn Swallow  2

Cave Swallow  1

Red-winged Blackbird  10

Great-tailed Grackle  40

Masked Booby at SPI, Willacy Co, 7/22/23

Wow it's been a long time since I've made a post.  May's spring migration migration here at Progreso Lakes was a real dud.  Good rains gave us lots of butterflies but warblers failed to materialize.  I think the April 28 storm with 80 mph wind and the resulting tree damage may have played a role.  Then it quit raining starting with June and daily high temperatures over 100 have been the norm and that has continued through July and into August.  

Back on July 22, I made a run up the beach at South Padre Island with the intent of finding a frigatebird for Willacy County.  It used to be that driving the beach wasn't that big a deal.  Yes there might be a rough spot that required four wheel drive but mostly it was pretty smooth.  But anymore the beach seems to always be rough with little hard sand along the water.  It may well be the result of higher sea levels these days.  Anyway it's not as fun anymore and I'm always having to keep the rpms up on our Jeep to plow through the deep sand.  I made it up to just a couple miles short of the Port Mansfield channel when I decided I was waisting my time.  There were plenty of birds but just the most common stuff.

So I turned around and started the long painful slog back south.  And then about four miles north of the Cameron County line I spotted a large mostly white bird cruising south about 100 yards aff shore.  I put the binocs on it and sure enough it was a booby.  Problem was it was moving fast and when I stopped to photograph it all I could get was a rear view shot.  So I punched down on the gas, flying through the sand, and eventually got ahead of the fast moving booby.  I was able to get a few shot as is cruised past me, landed on the water and then abruptly made a ninty degree turn and headed out to see.

Years ago the Masked Booby was know as the Blue-faced Booby.  They're pretty common in the pelagic waters of the Gulf and farther south.  It's the first one I've ever found from the beach and was bird #292 for my Willacy County list.  So a boring day turned into a good day!