Oh Those Juveniles

Typically, I am a Citizen Scientist with Cornel Labs and one of the studies I take part in is “Nest Watch”.  It is a fun thing  to share with our South Texas birding guests, especially if they are staying with us during fledging season as our on site birding is out of this world.

We have had Green Parakeets nesting in our yard for several years and always eagerly await their appearance.  This year we where able to ID the nest site and we kept close watch all Spring and Summer wondering how many, if any, baby parakeets would survive.  On Thursday  I was up very early in the morning and I noticed one baby parrot right off of our main patio.  The parents where in the tree nearby making a lot of racket.

I had my camera nearby and took a few clicks and then went back to bed (insomnia, ugh) after telling my husband about the fledgling.  I did not know, but he was so concerned about the bird being on the ground – granted he did look brandy-new and a bit unstable — that he gently got it on a perch and placed it high in the nook of the tree.  He checked on the bird when he got home and was glad to see him still clinging there in the same spot then and again the next morning.

The following day, still struggling with insomnia, I woke *late* in the day and let our dog out and forgot her, until my husband came home.  He walked in asking about the bird and I was, uncommonly less than helpful and he said that the poor parrot had two strikes against it, the dog was loose and the yard and been mowed.  Needless to say he was not happy.  The very next day, bright and early I saw the three parrots, ‘rents & fledging, flying out of the yard and the baby, well he looked just about perfect.

I’ll let the other Juves tell their own tales with pictures, too.

Yellow-Crested Night Heron

Doves

Grackles

Golden-fronted Woodpecker

I also got this birders view of the universal deep field …  weird!

Best New Books for Birders

From Birders Digest

http://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/blog/2013/07/25/four-new-books-sure-to-help-you-id-birds-of-prey-birds-of-the-east-and-west-and-bird-song/

Chirping Ladder-back babies

I posted back in April that we had Ladder-backed Woodpeckers nesting directly next to our drive way. 

http://birdmecca.posterous.com/ladderback-nest-boom-chachalaca

Weeks ago, I had decided that they had all feldged, because I had begun to see less and less of the adults.  But this week my husband parked next to the tree and HEARD them; following is a recording taken 7/31/11

Baby_Ladder-backs.m4a

Here is a shot taken of the adult bird when it first began making the nest, taken by our friend Lisa Edwards

And the mother sitting the nest

Tenacious, loyal breeders! Wow!

Awesome New Friends and 1st Rain of 2011

ON TOPIC & NOT TO BE MISSED!

I have a varied and international group of friends on my birding Face Book page and I’ve made a new friend this week who is a true gem, a diamond in the rough, a gentleman among scholars.  Bill has turned me on to some wonderful new friends and I’d like to share them with you.

1.) First, I’d like to introduce his son, Bryan Tarbox who is currently on a six-week internship for Texas A&M University in Costa Rica and is a gifted photographer

— see some of his other amazing birds shots at 

http://www.pbase.com/disx0d

You can also follow his internship at Bryan Tarbox at Texas A&M on Face Book.  

Bill also introduced me to a few of his favorite bloggers and I can only agree with him, they are quite talented and not to be missed.

2.) Carolyn writes about her bird sanctuary at Christmas Mountains Oasis in mystical West Texas and can be found here

http://cmoasis.blogspot.com/

Photo by Carolyn Ohl-Johnson

 3.) Then, there is the eclectic blog of Heidi Trudell and Matthew York, “See Trail” which is a wonderful combination of conservation, birding, and everything else on the Trail right here

http://seetrail.blogspot.com/

Photo by Heidi Trudell

You can also find links to these and other blogs, people, and places that I endorse here in the right column of the blog under “LINKS”

Finally I’d like to introduce a “neighbor” of mine — out in the wilds at some point, everyone becomes a neighbor, here in Texas.

4.) McIntyre Birding Tours in Port Aransas, Texas, is owned and operated by native Texans with affordable rates and the flexibility that ONLY birders can truly appreciate.  These are some of the BEST guides we have in South Texas and are sure to please even the most discriminating birders. Check out their offerings here

http://www.mcintyrebirdingtours.com/page/page/4130574.htm

In the end, who are we really, without friends and neighbors?

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OFF TOPIC  & COMPLETELY SELF SERVING

Not much bird wise happening in McAllen, today.  We did however get our first rain of the YEAR.

 

Lord, call yo momma, the water is a’risin’!

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My garden has gone WILD!

I have more Lady Cream Peas than I will EVER be able to manage — which only means a bountiful harvest for friends and family (did I mention that my neighbors adore me?).  And I’m away for several weeks in a few days, I’m frightened that with this rain I will return to find that the garden has truly gone mad and has overtaken house and husband!

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P.S. We’ve a weeklong forecast for rain, glory be, and

please don’t let the garden go berserk!

Urban Colony of Yellow-Crowned Night Heron Surges

UPDATE ON THE COLONY 2012, We saw the first pair of Night Herons arrive at the nests the past week. So for we have only seen two pair, but  I am so intriqued to see how many more nest we have this year, or if this will be an unusally small colony since it is in an urban area.

I was lucky to get a few decent shots.  I will keep the nest count updated and maybe get some addional good photos.

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The Yellow-crowned Night Herons, unlike the Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, are not at all familiar to us. The first time we saw them a few years back, I was astounded.  My husband and I and a friend staying with us were outside near dark, when we saw a fairly large bird fly at about 10 feet above ground, right in front of us, and into the mesquite tree close by. The first thing I noticed was the webbed feet; my husband was awed by the perfect yellow crest; while our friend was just clueless! The bird broke off a large branch of mesquite and flew back the way it had came. None of us had ever seen a bird actually break off nesting material!

A vigorous discusion ensued about what we had seen. I claimed a shore bird, my husband said something else, and our friend said “uh, uh”! The bird repeated the behavior several more times and we all stuck to our initial observations, but it soon became dark and we went inside.  Subsequently, we looked it up and talked to our neighbors and discovered that it was a Yellow-crowned Night Heron and that it was nesting in the neighbor’s backyard.

Night Herons are nocturnal, of course, and feed mainly on crustaceans. We are in the city, 100+ miles from the coast! None of us could imagine what these birds were doing NESTING in our area.  

This part of Texas is known colloquially as the Rio Grande Valley which loosely transpired when back in the early part of the 20th century large agricultural land owners needed workers and devised a marketing strategy to brand the area as a lush tropical valley, when in truth it is a flat, almost, alluvial plane. The five county area devising South Texas is criss-crossed with irrigation canals from that time, even though much of the area is no longer agricultural.

We imagined that perhaps the birds were finding food in the canals, one of which runs parallel to us four streets over, for many miles.  In the end we found out that the herons were mostly feeding on the neighbors collection of pool frogs — they have a wonderful old pool that does not have modern filtration and therefore attracts all sorts of interesting visitors for the few short months that they use it.

We were delighted with the birds and thrilled when the juveniles began appearing in our yard a few months later.

The Yellow-crested Herons appearance did not take us by surprise this year,

but literally SHOCKED us by their numbers! 

It appears that they are well known for nesting in colonies, often on secluded islandS, 50 ft and more in the tree tops, far out on limbs. We’ve counted the nest and believe that in one year we went from one Yellow-crowned nest to 8, possibly more.  All appear to have successfully raised at least two young ones. We have only seen one deceased bird, obviously a juvenile, still in the nest but with no apparent injury.

Other juveniles have been seen in our yard for about a week now, I expect they will me moving on soon.

 

Mature Yellow-crowned Night Heron photo courtesy of of Cornel Lab who reports that these birds are sometimes protected on the edge of their range and have historically been hunted as a delicacy or for their plumage.

God knows how many we will have next year.

Raptor Confusion!

 More on this gorgeous raptor later in the article.

The conservation property that we partially own is 40 minutes from door to door, but worlds apart; from the hubbub of the city to the solitude of nature in a short 40 minutes.  I go as often as I can, so when my friend from Corpus Christi called and said “let’s go the the ranch, right now.”

I said “ok” and soon found myself turning onto the long caliche road that leads to our ranch. The first thing I noticed was this bird’s nest.

I guess they will build anywhere that suits!

 

The obligatory hawk on the telephone pool, this time a Harris Hawk.

And the to-be-expected Diamondback Rattle snake, photo safely taken from inside the car, thank you very much — I have had more than one rattle snake “interaction” at the ranch and I try my utmost to stay away from them.

My friend was already there when I arrived and it was getting dark. So we turned in and but  took a few clicks and the next day I got shots of a common garden snake, Couch’s Kingbird, monarch butterflies and a not-too-bad silhouette of a blackbird.

I found large Nilgai tracks at the lake. We saw a Altimira Oriole the entire time we were there, unfortunately no good pictures – although I did embarrass myself by including the very out of focus shot just to prove the Altamira sighting.

And lots of soaring raptors and vultures.

I went out on a four-wheeler to see what was around and as I turned the corner to the lake I ran into this guy. He immediately acted strange. First, he did not fly away when I got off the fou-wheeler and moved towards it. He never fly away from me. I assumed it was wounded. Then, my trained lab — Matty — saw me at the lake and ran down and challenged the raptor.  He flew onto the limb in the lake, but was never more than a few feet off the ground and it wasn’t a long flight. I decided that it was best to leave it alone.

The next morning, I wanted to fish in my lucky spot at the lake and when I got down there I saw the same raptor again. I watched him chase a large toad toward the lake, but he missed it and once again did not fly away from me. I became even more concerned.

I called one of our area experts and asked if we had a raptor rescue facility nearby and he said that we do not.  He referred me to the wildlife refugee at Santa Anna and I called them, they referred me to an individual who said “no” they would not take a raptor that could fly and proceeded to refer me to the game warden.  Needless to say, I got nowhere. However, Ken Merritt, our expert, said that going after the toad would be unusual for what I thought this raptor species was, and he suggested it was likely an Osprey.

I left it alone, and started to fish.  I quickly caught this bass, it is a catch and release lake, and one of the ranch hands was with me and this fish was promptly released back into the water. But then, the ranch hand left and I got to thinking that I could catch another fish and leave it for the Osprey, it would be an act of kindness, so I set out!

This was the monster that I caught.  Clearly close to 15 inches and heavy. There really was a point when I thought I would not be able to land this fish, but I saw that it was big and I wanted it for the raptor so I fought hard. Once I caught it, I hurriedly took a picture and unhooked it to take it half way back around the lake to where I last saw the raptor.

When I got there, the raptor hoped away into the brush, but didn’t fly. I got as close as I could, while constantly on guard for those aforementioned rattlers and tossed the still flopping fish near it. We never go “into the brush at our ranch”! The raptor looked at the fish, but showed no other interest and again I believed that I needed to limit my interaction with the bird as little as possible.

I left and returned to the lodge and prepared to head back for home, bu checked one last time to see if the raptor had taken any more interest in the fish, but it appeared that it had not.  I saw the raptor once last time as I turned to leave tucked up under an overhanging mesquite tree for shade.  I tossed the now stiff and ant infected fish under the shade of the tree and said a small prayer of grace for the bird.

Once I arrived at home, I checked Cornel Lab’s webpage and now believe that what I saw wasn’t an Osprey at all but a Broad-winged Hawk — no wonder he didn’t like my fish. 

 

Rhonda’s Backyard Bird Count (official)

I am currently at an official 30 species count for the yard.  My most profound thanks to Tom Hurst for doing this for me, he was my guest.  He spent a lot of time in the yard almost everyday and surveyed at different times.  This is an official backyard bird account, verified by an expert birder.

Black-bellied Whistling Duck

Plain Chacalaca

Neotropic Cormorant (fly over)

Great Egret (fly over)

Yellow Crowned Heron (nesting)

Turkey Vulture (fly over)

Broad-winged Hawk (fly over)

Copper’s Hawk (fly over)

Rock Pigeon

White-winged Dove

Morning Dove

Inca Dove

Eastern Screech Owl (hunting and calling)

Chimney Swift (fly over)

Buff-bellied Hummingbird

Golden Fronted Woodpecker (nesting)

Ladder-backed Woodpecker (nesting)

Great Kiskadee

Couch’s Kingbird

Green Jay

Black-crested Titmouse

Clay-colored Thrush

Northern Mockingbird

Long-billed Thrush

European Starling

Orange-crowned Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Red-winged Blackbirds

Great-tailed Crackle

House Sparrow

Green parakeets (nesting)

Red-crowned (nesting)

 

 

Songbird

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Recorded just now in the backyard. It’s a windy evening, so the chimes are ringing, but the call is so clear.

Is it a songbird?

Vernal Adieu

Spring in South Texas is a birding bonanza!

Of the 338 species of Neartic-Neotropical migrants in North America, 98% have been recorded in Texas. This means that the 629 species of birds reported in Texas, 53% of them are Neartic-Neotropical migrants.

Birds of all colors, sizes, and shapes pass through our area en route to their nesting grounds in Texas and beyond during the prime Spring migration time of April and May. Not to mention the numerous two fisted birders of all colors and shapes and sizes and some with very wierd dialects.

Novice birders, or pigeon haters cannot help but be impressed with the varieties and numbers of migrants. Even the locals are awed at this time of the year and also filled with questions about bird migration. Let’s see if I can answer of few of them.

The best part is that a few of the migrants overwintered* in South Texas, which means we get to see them for months at a time. But most of them have spent their winters in the Tropics, from Central Mexico to South America.  Spring reverses the cycle and these Nearartic-Neotropics return North to nest and fan out across Texas and the rest of North America. One of my favorite facts about migrating birds is the Arctic shorebirds that winter in southern South America and nest in northern Alaska; traveling round-trip well over 13,000 miles!This is endurance beyond anything else in the animal kingdom.

Migrant songbirds are an interesting bunch as they mainly migrate a night, flying nonstop for up to 80 to 90 hours. Most leave Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in the early evening and arrive along the Texas Gulf Coast the following day (depending upon weather conditions), a distance of about 550 miles. If you are wondering how in the heck to catch a sighting of these guys; set up a spotting scope on a clear night aimed at the moon; the abundant birds appear as black specks. Not quite as alluring as those great digiscoped shoots but awesome in the magnitude of numbers.

Most long-distance migrants travel between 25 and 40 mph. Flight speeds vary, however. For instance, Purple Martins fly at 27 mph, shorebirds fly between 45 and 55 mph, and hummingbirds may fly up to 55 mpg. Raptors sail along with the prevailing winds, but can fly much faster when necessary; Peregrine Falcons, for example, can dive at an impressive bullet spend of 140 mph.

During Spring migration most birds fly by night and settle in for the day to forage and rest, so it’s the best time to catch them for a good close up look-see. During the Fall migration the reverse is true; travel is mostly done by day and rest is at night. However not all birds fly at night even during Spring migration, swallows do not and flycatchers who feed in flight usually migrate during the daylight hours. We see many of these birds flying north over the fields and woodlands of South Texas. The favored, raptors also fly during daylight hours, roost overnight, and head out again in the morning as soon as the day warms up enough for them to take advantage of the rising thermals.

Depending on the topography, about 90% of all migrating birds fly below 5,000 feet above ground level. Many fly much lower and are audible on calm days. At night when flying over land, they tend to fly higher. The Trans-Gulf migrants usually fly very low, often able to take advantage of even the slightest updrafts.

Most migrating birds tend to stick with their own kind, much like we stubborn humans. With the exception of songbirds, ducks, and shorebirds. Sometimes confusing the matter, many species of hawks and other raptors often roost together at choice sites, so that their morning departures incorrectly give the impression that they are migrating in mixed flocks.

In preparation for migration most birds accumulate great quantities of fat as fuel for their long-distance flights. Many double their weight. The tiny Ruby-throated Hummingbird, weighing 4.5 grams, uses 2 grams of fat to fly nonstop for twenty-six hours. A typical bird will loses almost 1% of its body weight per hour while migrating. So if you happen to live in an area where birds migrant, stuff them full just before the migration.

A bird’s signal to migrate is a complex thing, but a simple answer is the changing length in daytime hours. And not to worry your feeders will not entice a bird to stay longer than it should.

The Birds Nest has availability in April and May offering two nights FREE for anyone who books two full weeks from either a Facebook referral

or a posterous referral. 

Not to be a braggart, ok maybe just a little, but if you are interested in the native “specialty” birds in South Texas check this link for a partial list http://southtexasnature.com/Birds/Specialty

and watch this space for your very own Urban Birder’s Yard Bird List – coming soon. 

My most gracious thank to Lisa Edwards for all photos!

 

Incoming Green Parakeets!!!

From the National Audubon Society

Green Parakeet Aratinga holochlora

This is the most northerly occurring Aratinga parakeet. Ornithologists disagree about the actual number of species that make up the Green Parakeet complex. The American Ornithologists’ Union lumps the form from Socorro Island under Green Parakeet but separates the form inhabiting the Pacific slope of southern Mexico t

o Nicaragua as a distinct species called the Pacific Parakeet. Other groups see all three populations as distinct species. 

Appearance: Well-named, this large parakeet (up to 13 inches in length) is entirely green, though some may have a few reddish or orange feathers around the face and throat. It is darker above than on the underside, which is more yellowish. It has a stout, pale, hooked bill, gray feet, and a ring of gray skin around the eye. In flight, it moves with deep rapid wingbeats. At about 21 inches across, its wings are rounded at the tips. The tail is long and pointed. With their raucous, high-pitched chatter, flocks of these birds are hard to overlook. 

Range & Distribution: In the United States, the Green Parakeet occurs only in extreme southern Texas, but its primary range extends from eastern Mexico, south through parts of Guatemala to El Salvador, Honduras, and southern Nicaragua. 

Habitat: Green Parakeets occur in a variety of habitats, from open woods to scrub, pines, swamp forests, or farmland. They can be found at elevations up to 2,200 meters. Populations in Texas make use of palm groves in several cities across the Rio Grande Valley. 

Feeding: The Green Parakeet is mainly a canopy feeder, foraging within woodlands for fruits, berries, nuts, and seeds. It will also eat corn, and flocks of these birds are sometimes considered a crop pest. 
Reproduction: The birds are cavity nesters, and will make use of hollowed trees, stone crevices, holes in buildings, and termite mounds. They will also nest colonially on cliff faces. Breeding has been recorded from January through April (April through August in southern Texas). Once paired, birds will investigate nest cavities, and the female will eventually lay 3-4 eggs. Following the breeding season, adult and young birds form communal roosts, which can number into the hundreds. 

Migration: While this species is non-migratory, flocks will often wander good distances in response to the availability of food sources.

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I took the video tonight in McAllen, Texas at 10th Street and Dove Street.  Again, don’t expect quality vid — it’s right on a very busy street corner and there’s lots of background noise — but you still get the sheer magnitude of the numbers that come in at night.

It is great to live in an area where you can see these birds all year round.  They are so clownish and affectionate, we love them!

Picture provided by our resident birder/photographer, Lisa Edwards.