Campout at South Llano River State Park

South Llano River State Park is one of my favorite places to camp,  paddle, hike and birdwatch.  A group of friends to share all these activities with makes it all the more fun.

I'll paddle on Sunday, so watch for a blog about that in the future. But I've been birdwatching hard, at the four blinds, around the campground and on the trails. Wildflowers are in bloom and butterflies abound.  Birds are gobbling up caterpillars and bugs and coming to bath in the waterfalls.  Everything is greening up, even the pokey pecan trees.

Friday,  I logged over nine miles on my stepmeter, about seven of that from actual hiking, with frequent stops to admire the wildflowers, listen and look for birds, chase down chats, and to sneak up on butterflies. I also stopped at two blinds. The day before, I got to see the black-capped vireo without my camera. Saturday, Linda and I were the only ones who didn't paddle - I don't want to have to do any heavy steering and there are a few patches of whitewater to navigate - so we went birding all morning. She first took me to the blind where she had photographed the Hutton's vireo but I haven't gotten to see it.  We spent several hours walking the trails and enjoying the indigo buntings, six vermillion flycatchers, some in pairs, three swamp sparrows, a pretty rare sparrow here, and a black-tailed gnatcatcher.  We finally got to Agarita Blind to look for the black-capped vireo and  found people in the path watching for him. We stayed with them for a while and learned it's song, then started to walk to the blind.  Linda went back to pick up her camera and I watched a little bird fly into an oak just outside the blind area.  He landed on a bare limb and I quickly got my binoculars on him. He was a black-capped vireo singing. But he flew before I could get my camera on him and then flew further away, still calling, as Linda got back to me. We watched for him until we got too hot and hungry but plan to go back again this (Saturday) afternoon.

Oh yes, when I first saw the black-capped vireo, I was in the company of Greg Miller, the poor birder in the book, the Big Year. He was a guest speaker and tour guide at  Wings over the Hills, a birding festival happening this weekend in Fredericksburg, Texas. He came with a tour from the festival about 5 minutes after I saw the vireo. He's a super, laid-back, friendly and helpful person.

Evenings are devoted to group suppers within our cooking group with neighboring camping friends stopping by. Saturday night is a full group meal. Four of us are supplying pulled pork.  I'm the official cook and it is cooking in a crock pot. After I get this blog ready to post - I have to go to the Junction Library to get wi-fi - I'll go back and remove it from all the grease, then shred it and put in back in the pot with Pat's homemade BBQ sauce.  Should be delicious.

We usually come here the first week in May and the most abundant and in-your-face bird is the Bell's vireo which nests here. They are already here, singing incessantly.

The Bell's vireo who owns my camping site. I think the wing thing is part of his display. 

My friend, Pat and I went on a short hike yesterday before I did several more hours of hiking/birding and he went mountain biking. 

One of at least fifty summer tanagers - they are almost always within sight or hearing

Early morning view up the South Llano River

A black-crested titmouse is using up all the bathwater, according to the screaming pine siskin.

This area has lots of mesquite trees and they are blooming - great for bugs and the birds that eat them

A white-crowned sparrow - one of only a few still here

One of the sulphur butterflies on the abundant verbena

A bathing painted bunting looks more like a submarine

I found only this one group of these beautiful flowers - the cloudy day was perfect to
photograph white 

Another weedy flower I love

Linda watching for the return of the black-capped vireo by the Agrita Blind

Axis deer, imported from India, have escaped and live in the park

There are only a few chipping sparrows left

Lark sparrows are very common here 

Great crested flycatcher

Black-tailed gnatcatcher 

Just another bather - this a Nashville Warbler

Bountiful Birds in Port Aransas

I'm still on my birding trip across several ecosystems in Texas.  Monday I recuperated from the King Ranch tour and got a meal cooked and frozen so I can just reheat it this weekend to serve to my cooking group.

But the birds in Port Aransas were calling to me.  Port Aransas is on Mustang Island, a barrier island and the first land some birds see after they leave south or central America. ACape May warbler has been at the Leonabell Turnbull Birding Center for a few days and it is always good for passerines in migration, as well as ducks and waders.  I left Winnie's house an hour before sunrise  Tuesday morning and headed there first. I saw lots of quick-moving little birds, including several Tennessee warblers, a common yellowthroat, a blackburnian warbler and a Baltimore oriole, none of which would sit still long enough for me to get a good picture of them. But several other birds did pose.

Swainson's Thrush, I think

A tricolored heron hunted next to the boardwalk

And on the way in, I found my first of season Wilson's phalaropes and was surprised to see a crested caracara eating what looked like a laughing gull.

Crested caracara with breakfast

I moved on to Paradise Pond, a tiny little bird oasis in back of a pretty good Mexican Restaurant.  It had almost no birds but did have a male cerulean warbler, a life bird for me.  I watched as the cerulean, a painted bunting, and a gray catbird all arrived at almost the same time but in slightly different places in front of me. Only the catbird sat still long enough for a portrait.  I also saw a northern parula there.  A green heron posed closed to us, too.

Green Heron

Then I spent a few hours at Charlie's Pasture, a great place for shorebirds, waders, ducks, and raptors. I saw so many birds of so many species, I completely lost my ability to ID them and had to relearn them.  I was happy to see lark sparrows and enjoyed the antics of two red and two white morphs of reddish egrets. Phalaropes were spinning everywhere and a few females were getting into their party dresses. (The males sit on the eggs and raise the kids while the females go find another boyfriend so they are the beautiful sex.) And I saw a few of my favorite birds, avocets, in full breeding plumage.

I think this barnswallow is carrying mud to build a nest

A pelican flew right at me 

This bug was too photogenic to pass up

Wilson's phalarope and reddish egret

A female Wilson's phalarope with her entourage 

I'm so pretty, oh so pretty!

Semipalmated plover

Least sandpiper

Feeding avocet in breeding plumage

White-phase reddish egret on a bad hair day with roseate spoonbills

Horned Lark

Reddish egret doing its crazy chase and mantling

Stilt Sandpiper

Indigo Bunting

I birded until noon, then came back and deleted most of my pictures and helped my host, Wayne, (very little)  put my new racks on my car so I could borrow back my little whitewater kayak that I use every time I get to paddle on  South Llano River.  The rest of the evening, I edited pictures, wrote this blog, and shopped for vegetables for stir fry and cut them up so they will be ready to dump in the pot Wednesday night when I'll be camping with friends at South Llano State Park for a long weekend.  I also put the dry rub on the pork roast that will turn into pulled pork.

We'll be paddling, birding, biking, hiking and just hanging out. I'm hoping for a golden-cheeked warbler as well as lots of photogenic birds since there are four bird blinds there, as well as lots of birdy territory. The time I was birding was mostly sunny, but five minutes after I started home, I was in a rain shower. Now we have heavy clouds and wandering showers again.

Car ready to haul my kayak

Tuesday night I finished food preparations and now have the most delicious hands since the pork roast rub is under my fingernails - love that smoked paprika smell.

Wednesday, I'll head out early to save campsites close together for the early arrivals at South Llano State Park and will be birding if the weather allows. We still having some rain, although it's happening less often and with less total rainfall. And I'm looking forward to hammock time.

I've linked to Wild Bird Wednesday

Looking for Rarities at King Ranch

I wanted to do a tour at King Ranch, so checked on the cost. It was within my budget If I could get several more friends. Eight of us arrived at the visitor center before 6:00 A.M. and boarded the van for a trip to the Norias Division, about an hour away.

Our first stop, a little after dawn where we saw Vermillion flycatchers, hooded orioles, and a barn owl

We arrived in fog and a misty rain but after about an hour, the weather improved and we had cloudy to partly sunny skies the rest of the day. Our guide, Tom, was a master birder and could find birds even in the early dawn hours. He stopped soon after we started down the narrow, vegetation-lined road to show us a ferruginous pygmy owl. It was still too dark for pictures but we did get another one to let us photograph it. This owl is diurnal and will call in the day time. After it attracts birds to come mob it, it sometimes makes a meal of one of them.

The ferruginous pygmy owl has false eyes on the back of its head

And regular owl eyes in the front

We found hooded orioles and also one of their nests, which they build under and over reaching palm frond.

Hooded oriole - this was at Benton Rio Grande State Park two days earlier

Hooded oriole nest

The ranch has some exotic animals, including impala and nilgai.  We got a quick glimpse of a running nilgai but the three impala hung around and we saw them several times.

Impala

The area has been getting lots of rain all spring and is very lush.  We traveled over fields dotted with trees and down into a wonderful oak forest that grows over old sands. Northern Bobwhite called, ran along the road, and in the tracks we took across a grasslands area where we saw dicksessels and a great horned owl with three nestlings.  A few minutes later I saw a lifer, a Botteri's sparrow which was fiercely protecting its territory with its song.

One of dozens of northern bobwhite

Dicksissel

Singing Botteri's sparrow

Flycatchers loved this habitat.  We had lots of couches kingbirds, a few tropical kingbirds, several brown-crested flycatchers, and near the end of the day had our only eastern kingbird. 

Brown-crested flycatcher

We saw or heard lots of these greater roadrunners

Wild turkeys were everywhere.  We saw them across fields, around the buildings, and out in the live oak forest.

Rio Grande Wild Turkey

A view into the live oak forest

The oak forest was an amazing place.  As the mesquite changed to oak, we saw lots of butterflies.  One of them was very special  and rare - an eastern Mexican white skipper, first seen in the United States in 2007.

That rare east Mexican white skipper

Swallowtail

One of our target birds was a groove-billed ani.  As we entered an area with more trees, Tom told us to tell him if we saw any grackles because they would be anis.  Minutes later, Natalie called a grackle and Tom stopped and played the Ani call.  We had two anis come in and sit out in the open and pose.

We had enough light to see the gray edges to the ani's feathers

We spent the last part of the afternoon, in the oak forest area,  hunting that tiny, nondescript bird with the big call, the northern bearded tyrannulet, as well  the tropical parula. We were successful on the tropical parula but not the tyrannulet. Otherwise, we got all our target birds except for the white-tailed hawk, as well as a total of sixty-four species.

This tanager, Audubon's oriole, titmice, and a cardinal came in while calling the
northern bearded tyrannulet

The very happy tour group at the end of a wonderful day

Sorry for the late blog.  But I didn't have many good pictures from two days of birding - not many birds and really bad light. So I thought you would rather come along on this tour with me. Hope you are finding good birds where you live.