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FOR THE BIRDS
Birding with a capital 'B'
 | | Birding enthusiasts Nan Dietert and Lyndon Holcomb are reporting on local and area birding. To report a sighting, contact them at lyndonholcomb@yahoo.com. |
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How in the world do I start talking about this week's birding? Actually I'm talking about BIRDING with capitals, not birding with the "little letters" or anything else having to do with little, but big. I'm thinking big, kind of like YES, WOW, FANTASTIC, WONDERFUL BIRDING!
I know I'm dating myself here; I'm sure it was really cool birding, but there was nothing really cool about it; it was really hot birding. Our birds were hot, the ambient temperature was hot, the "hot spots" were hot, and we thought we were "hot shot" birders because everywhere we went, everywhere we looked, we got our birds, our goals and more. That was really it of course; we wanted, we searched, we found, and in some cases it seemed we were almost given our prizes. So we pointed and whooped and laughed and hugged the spotting scope in disbelief as we gazed at the birds that fulfilled our wishes. We felt blessed.
You see, we had some out-oftown friends who every couple of days would produce a wish list: A list of birds they wanted to see before they were to return to the "cools" of Colorado, and that was the start of it all. I would look at the list, laugh, shake my head, and wonder what they'd come up with next, and what I could do about it. Now, some of these birds I'd never hunted in May; I would get them all winter, but in the late spring I was not sure where they would be; others could be found more easily. So we planed our routes, our time limitations and our goals, and set out to search. That was our quest.
We birded Port Aransas and had good birds all week. We birded the edges of Rockport and the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and had a displaying bronzed cowbird, a least bittern, five purple gallinules, a great kiskadee, an endless series of displays by a wild turkey male gobbler to his "sweet thing", and an almost endless armada of crested caracaras as we left the refuge.
A couple of days after that, we went to the beach and saw red knots all over the place. Then we raced off to the mud-flats and spotted two Wilson's plovers with young chicks scampering about like cotton balls on stilts. Those same flats gave us piping plovers, horned larks (male and female), common nighthawks (on the ground and flying), a whitetailed hawk and a whimbrel up close with two long-billed curlews for comparison.
As we went on we saw a common loon, our much sought-after American oystercatcher (flying and feeding) and a much needed marbled godwit that flew in and landed about 70 feet in front of us and started pulling up worms as if we did not even exist! I had not felt confident that we could easily find a marbled godwit this late, and this one was just given to us! We were incredulous.
Two days later, with new goals in mind, we took off for Port Lavaca to work Magic Ridge and the nearby farm fields. Now, Lyndon's cousin Diane had some of these birds "nailed down"; she'd been out looking over the rice fields. Sure enough, in the flooded fields we found our main target birds, the Hudsonian godwits. Then we added fulvous whistling ducks and boat-tailed grackles. The "Ridge" gave us a white-rumped sandpiper (up close for study) and several seaside sparrows singing. Our friends got five life birds that day! Somehow or another, I can't wait for the next list!
That is what kind of week it has been, and we haven't even talked about all the lovelies brought in by the "cold" front (wind shift) and showers early Sunday morning to the Joan and Scott Holt Paradise Pond. We had at least 15 species of warblers and 24 total species of migrating song birds that day.
A British photographer came up with the bird of the week for Paradise -- a black-throated blue warbler, a first year female. She was a subtle bird, and everyone enjoyed seeing her.
And, so it goes. I wish it would go on forever. Keep on birding!
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