Birding with Laurel: A Visit to Estero Llano Grande State Park

Dec 27, 2019


I had to go to Birmingham for a deposition on the case about my car wreck.  I also wanted to spend Christmas vacation visiting some of my favorite birding spots in Texas. I didn't get any local takers but then my friend Laurel, from Maryland, asked if I'd like to do a birding trip.  I told her all she needed to do was to come meet up with me. We met in Mobile and then drove to Houston to begin birding down the Texas coast. These blogs will not be in order but I'll cover most of the places or areas where we birded.

I'm writing this in the library of Junction, Texas after Laurel and I spent the morning visiting the four blinds and walking the trails that are only open from 10:00 - 3:00.  The rest of the time they are closed to protect the visiting turkeys.  But we only saw seven  turkeys while expected to see at least twenty.  (I asked the staff about the turkeys and they think those seven males are all they have. They advertised eight hundred when I first started visiting about thirty years ago. ) We are also finding very few birds compared to other years. Laurel is exploring back roads around town and enjoying the Hill Country. Stay tuned for that blog later.

Sunrise on the way - this area is getting more and more windmills

Laurel and I went to Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in the morning because we had reserved a spot on the tour bus.  I apparently didn't get any decent pictures in the cloudy light but we had a good time.  But the birds were in short supply and high winds kept us from seeing several expected species. We had better luck at the state park, even though we had way fewer birds than expected. Winnie and Paula, Corpus Friends, came to join us and we met them there.

Green jay

Orange crowned warbler - we saw lots of these

Mottled ducks - a Texas native in distress

There was a huge group of resting white pelicans in the Llano Grande

We also saw a distant group of black -necked stilts 

We had a bonanza of birds at alligator lake, including night herons, the only anhinga we saw along the coast, and the common pauraque, for which we had to search a lot longer than usual .  It is usual in a a spot 10X10 or less but had moved since I've been looking for it or its prodigy over the last twenty some years.

Yellow crowned night heron

Anhinga

Immature yellow crowned night heron

Black crowned night heron

Sleeping common pauraque

White ibis

Least grebe

We heard this bird trill so it is a tropical kingbird. Couch's kingbird looks almost identical but has a different song

We got a closeup of a Harris hawk

Laurel and I made it back to civilization at Natalie's house last night  - I'm actually editing the blog before sending it into the ether this first Sunday of 2020 - and I just made breakfast for Natalie and Ellen and send them off to help with a  dog tracking test. Laurel just woke up and I need to go get ready for a day of birding in Galveston. 


Hope all of you are starting the new year with big plans to make it your best year ever. I'm hoping to continue that trend myself. I'm so grateful that I can still travel and volunteer and enjoy life and my widely scattered friends. 

Rewarding Day of Birding in the Texas Valley

It started at Santa Ana NWR. We joined my friend Winnie's Audubon group at 8:00 A, after only having to drive forty-five minutes, since we stayed with her son in Rio Hondo. Within minutes of starting our walk, we saw a Bullock's oriole, a  rarity at this time and place.  A few minutes later, we saw a clay-colored thrush, a common species at this park but a life bird for me.  Then we got into a mixed flock of little birds that had titmice,and blue gray gnatcatchers as well as a male yellow-throated warbler. We put up four olive sparrows while moving around for views of the flock.

Meanwhile a long-billed thrasher sang tirelessly until we had time to to get a look at him. By this time we already had around twenty species. Just a few yards further, I noticed a grayish bird foraging with red-winged blackbirds. We soon realized we had a rusty blackbird. I got  pictures of her in two different places and saw a second female fly into the brush behind where I was photographing her.

My favorite pose of the female rusty blackbird

A plain chachalaca showing its throat patch

The young male Bullock's oriole

A distant view, in dim light, of the singing long-billed thrasher

A solitary sandpiper - as identified by it's size,
yellow legs and huge eye ring

Great Kiskadees were calling and flashing their yellow breasts everywhere

The birding group, except for Winnie and me who were on the observation towers

Lovely spring blooming shrub - if you know it, please tell me in the blog comments - Thanks to   Angie, I now know this is Colima'- Zanthoxylum fagara

The red-winged blackbirds almost took over the feeders at midday

I love every part of the Texas Olive which is blooming now

View down one of the trails we walked in one of the few minutes of nice light

A distant view of the Couch's kingbird

A young male vermilion flycatcher who has almost completed his molt into adult plumage

We also saw ducks, black-necked stilts, and neotropic and double-crested cormorants. But the conditions did not allow decent photos of them.  The best ducks we saw were fulvous whistling ducks.

A olive sparrow stopped his foraging for just long enough for me to capture his picture

Fulvous whistling duck  - love their "watermarks"

If you are interested in the full list of birds we saw, here is the link to my eBird checklist. I had to prove we really saw the rusty blackbird and Bullock's oriole and wanted to have the olive sparrow picture in the list for myself.

Here is a link to the bar charts for birds seen over the last ten years at this refuge. It shows the best time of the year to look for each species.

We finally stopped birding this refuge after 1:00 P, continuing after the rest of our group drove off to lunch.  The wonderful birding day continued after we got to Estero Llano Grande State Park.  See my next blog for details. 

Best Tour for the Price - At Laguna Atascosa NWR

Winnie, my hostess in Corpus Christi ,had signed up for a field trip at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. She got her son to let us, and her three dogs, visit him so we wouldn't have to leave at  5:00 A.M.  And, since we had to travel so far, we decided to do a weekend birding blitz.  We got down to Rio Hondo Friday in time to eat an early lunch and then run over to Laguna Atascosa.  There we found that the afternoon tour still have some places left, provided we were willing to spend the grandiose price of $3.00.  (People under 65 are penalized by having to spend an extra $1.00 for the tour plus the $3.00 entry fee.)

We had both a driver and a guide for a group of 6 people.  We were in a van because of the weather but the tour usually goes in an open tram and holds twelve.  The tour takes you along the old auto tour. That was closed to the public after someone ran over an occelet, of which there are only about 50 left in Texas. So you almost HAVE to go on this tour to see much of the close birdy parts of the refuge.

Although we had unusually cold and cloudy weather, we saw sixty-one species total at the refuge.   Winnie and I probably saw about a dozen species that weren't on the tour, including an Altamira Oriole.  Because of the poor light the pictures are not very good.  But hopefully they will give you an idea of this wonderful place, one of the refuges that manages both for birds and the very endangered ocelot.

South Texas (known as the valley) gets lots of birds that mostly live in Mexico and points south. One of the most common is the green jay, one of my favorite birds. Other birds associated with this area include the plain chachalaca, the white-tipped dove, several species of orioles, the gray hawk and some thrushes.  The aplomado falcon is being reintroduced at this refuge, and, I think, others within the valley. Young ones have been seen as far up the coast as Goose Island State Park.

The green jay is always in evidence where birds are fed

The altamira oriole is another speciality here (photo by Winnie Shrum)

Plain chachalacas - the dawn chorus of several hundred of them yelling out their name definitely got me going at Bentsen Rio Grande State Park many years ago.

Even though we have a had a long cool and rainy spell, spring flowers are starting to appear.  We particularly loved the blooming yuccas.  These require the yucca moth for pollination.  The moth lays its eggs in the seed case and the larva eats a few of the seeds. We saw shrike, northern mockingbirds, kestrel and caracara sitting on on the yucca plant. The big caracara was able to sit on top of the bloom spike. 

A view of the vegetation between the road and the laguna

A male kestrel hunting from a perch in a yucca

The white-tipped doves are easy to see around feeders but often to hard to find in the thick underbrush

A large patch of verbena was blooming at the viewing platform

A view through a yucca of the fields/brush on the far side of the road

Closeup of yucca flowers

Open areas with trees or even little shrubs make for good hunting for vermillion flycatchers, here getting a little blown about by wind.  (by Winnie Shrum)

The ponds along the road, as well as the laguna were full of coots, ducks, waders, and grebes. We saw at least 19 tricolored herons there.  But the dull light and foggy conditions made it impossible to get usable pictures.

The refuge also offers kayak tours and is a wonderful destination.  They even have alligators, which, of course, were smart enough not to be out in the cold weather. The thorn forest intermingles with coastal wetlands, the most ecologically valuable lands in the world, there. Click here for more information.

Sorry I'm a little late.  Came back to Galveston yesterday so today felt like Monday.  Just back from getting released to do anything I want, including paddling.  Now just have to work on getting more strength and flexibility.  And of course get in shape to get my canoe on top of my car. 

Shared with Wild Bird Wednesday. Check out what wild birds other bloggers are writing about around the world.