Birding South Texas

Not just one, but nine unique locations in the Rio Grande Valley. Each site of the World Birding Center has its own attractions for both the first time visitor and expert birder. Not one season, but all seasons, as more than 500 bird species make this a not-to-be-missed nature destination. Palm-fringed resacas… rare thorn forest… riverside woodlands… crashing surf; the nine different sites that make up the World Birding Center together paint a colorful backdrop for birding in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. From a historic adobe hacienda to scenic bluffs high above the Rio Grande and pristine wilderness to teeming wetlands, the World Birding Center network offers visitors a dazzling array of birding adventures. Visitors will be treated to wilderness walks, float trips and hands-on, state-of-the-art educational exhibits, all under the umbrella of a world class birding experience: The World Birding Center, where you will truly find .   Sign up and McAllen Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to win a FREE trip.  Deadline in March 21, 2011. http://www.mcallencvb.com/uncategorized/win-the-opportunity-to-grow-your-bird…

Win a Free Trip to the Birding Mecca of the Country

With one of the most knowledgable and friendly guides around!.  Sign up to day and stay at the Gypsy Birders retreat where guest are treated like royalty and small, thoughtful gifts await.

http://www.mcallencvb.com/uncategorized/win-the-opportunity-to-grow-your-bird…

SIGN UP TODAY AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS! 

The Winter Migration is still in full swing, the temperatures are moderate and the airlines are having fare sales left and right. Now is the time!

DON’T MISS YOUR CHANCE TO VISIT THE BIRDING MECCA AND ADD TO YOUR LIFE LIST.

My last guest added eight in just a few short days.

Elf Owl In the City

We have been on the move a lot in the last several months from our home base here in McAllen.  I travelled up to Central and East Texas early last month and we have been back and forth to the ranch in Raymondville, Texas multiple times. I suspect I missed the winter migration of raptors this year, but I’ve seen plenty of natives like the kiskadee. One large male has been hanging out at our house, by the porch swing, out the kitchen window.

At the ranch we have seen Green Jays, Kingfishers, Vermillion Flycatchers, a large flock of posturing Turkey Vultures, and Wild Turkeys.  I also encountered a couple of birds that I have yet to identify: a small warbler with a stark black tail, and a sparrow sized bird with a bright red breast, almost as bright as the Vermillion Flycatcher.  

But tonight, my son and I had the best sighting yet, a Elf Owl!  We were sitting on the front porch and it was well after dark when my son thought he saw a bat. It landed in the tree 3 feet from us and I could tell it was too big for a bat.  Then my son said that perhaps it was on owl and my reply was, “It’s too small to be an owl.”  It flew off into our large century oak and we grabbed the flashlight and tracked him.  Again, we got within a few feet and it sat and posed for us for ten minutes or more.  I am not positive of that ID, it could have been an Pygmy Owl.

 

Photo By Charles Melton

I have also been grappling with the yearly task of finding a vacation rental in Texas where my entire family can spend the holidays — we do this every year in a central location. UGH!  It is not always easy to find the proper accommodations when you travel and certainly traveling for birding and other naturalist activities, which are often in remote locals, can be a serious and often frustrating endeavor.

 

That is why I’ve listed my house as a birding destination. 

 
We are located in an area flush with natural parks and native habitat

and the room that I let to birders is so much better than an ordinary hotel, it cost way less and

we actual have birding onsite.

Migrating Hawks and Chachalacas

I saw my first kettle of migrating hawks today, October 21, 2010.  They were too far away for me to identify the species, but it was a large kettle.  I will be looking up over the next few days.  

Meanwhile, the native, non-migratory Chachalaca, similar in size and form to a female Ring-necked Pheasant, are abundant in South Texas and well known for their loud clacking calls; they are even considered a nuisance in some neighborhoods when early morning activity comes a little too early.  I first saw the birds while visiting my husbands parents in La Feria, Texas I had never seen a bird this large or this loud before.

For information about the chachalaca visit

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/landwater/land/habitats/southtx_plain/upland_birds/chachalaca.phtml

I am now quite familiar with these wonderful birds. I have lived in my house for fourteen years and for most of that time we have had a nesting pair of chachalacas in our neighbor’s yard; we are separated by a brick fence.  We see them most active when they are nesting. We have always had dogs in our yard, and as you may guess, the combination of baby chachalacas and dogs is not ideal.  We learned soon enough that nature has its own ideas and we no longer try to rescue the babies if they happen to waddle and fall off the wall into our yard — typically everything turns out the way that it should. Our nesting pair has become part of the fabric of our neighborhood and we chart the course of the year with them.

Photo courtesy oh the Audubon Society

If you are interested in seeing chachalacas in native habitat within a city, I recommend late spring.

I have a private apartment at my house that I rent to birders and I can almost guarantee chachalaca sightings.  Just this past summer, my husband and I heard a loud, totally unfamiliar call from our back yard; when we looked we saw that it was the chachalacas being harried by a hawk. These birds are fierce breeders, easy to identify and frequently willing to stay awhile for some prime watching. 

Urban Birding and the Best Way to Travel

I am no expert, I am not really even an avid amateur, but by the sheer virtue of my location, I have become the Urban Birder in McAllen, Texas. Looking back now, I suppose it was inevitable that I would end up here, my attempts to “capture” one of the native parakeets has become a standard family story and served as our introduction to life in South Texas.

At the time, having just moved here from Houston, Texas, I was simply overcome with the sight of what appeared to be a pet shop parrot. Now I know that trapping these raucous birds is not only wrong, but darn near impossible. The story is a funny one, with the obligatory traps, nets, and water hoses, but one that I am reluctant to tell now that I have become a birder of sorts.

From that first encounter, I have branched out and am now very familiar with the best birding spots in South Texas. I’ve attended multiple birding, butterfly, and dragonfly festivals (I served as the Marketing Chair for the Annual Dragonfly Festival at Valley Nature Center) and am currently the proud owner of a parrot condo: basically a dead palm tree that houses innumerable species of nesting birds. How the tree became “dead” is another interesting story.

My family has lived in McAllen for 20 years, most of those years in the same neighborhood where I now reside; which turns out to be a stop on many of the birding festival tours owing to the aforementioned parakeets who seem to like our location as much as we do. So I have loads of birding stories from the Nanday Conures that hung out the first year we moved here and that we affectionately named Barbara and George after the then current President and First Lady, to the pair of Yellow Crested Night Herons we spotted this past spring and most fabulously of all about the baby Red-crowned Parrot that fledged from our parrot condo early this summer.

We feel certain the Red-crowned Parrots will be back and I hope you will be too.

I am currently running down a sighting of an Altamira Oriole in the yard  — here in the new Birding Mecca in the country.

I let out a small bedroom with it’s own private entrance and bath that we affectionate call the gypsy room.  It is very lovely and comfortable and has access to a great backyard and it has so much more to offer that a hotel and is much less expensive than a BNB.