Total Species seen by Month's end: 290
Number of species added during month: 290
Miles Driven: 8283
Review Species Added: 9
-
Golden-crowned Warbler - 1 January - UT Pan American
University, Hidalgo Co.
-
Greater Pewee - 1 January - Anzalduas County Park, Hidalgo
Co.
-
Blue Mockingbird - 1 January - Allen Williams', Pharr,
Hidalgo Co.
-
Purple Sandpiper - 3 January - Quintana Jetty, Brazoria Co.
-
Clark's Nutcracker - 5 January
- DMP - Bridge Gap Area, Jeff
Davis Co.
-
Allen's Hummingbird - 7 January - Mary Vancil's, West
Columbia, Brazoria Co.
-
Varied Thrush - 10 January - Hugh Jameson's Yard, El Paso, El
Paso Co.
-
Eurasian Wigeon - 10 January - Tornillo Reservoir, El Paso
Co.
-
Great Black-backed Gull - 19 January - Boca Chica Beach,
Cameron Co.
Summary & Highlights:
1 January (100
species)
I started off the year
birding in the lower Rio Grande Valley - around the McAllen area with my
brother Scott. We were able to "chase" three long-staying
review-list birds - Golden-crowned
Warbler, Blue Mockingbird, and Greater Pewee
- all in Hidalgo County. We were also able to find a group of Red-necked Phalaropes that had been
discovered only two days earlier at La Sal Del Rey NWR. There was also a
couple other tough birds present recently that we considered, but we had
heard that the Painted Redstart may have been lunch for an accipiter
recently and, when we checked out the feeder where a Green-breasted
Mango had been seen recently, we found no hummingbirds and no nectar in the
feeder. It was a great start to the year with 100 species
including the birds mentioned above as well as 14 species of raptors, 8
species of warblers, as well as several of the valley specialties.
2 January (120
species)
On January 2nd, my brother
and I started at Chapeņo and hung around until 10am waiting
unsuccessfully for Brown Jays
to show (though it is the only reliable spot for these birds in the US, there
was about a 50/50 success rate there that winter we were told)
but we did get
Audubon's Oriole and, very much a surprise to me, one fly-by Red-billed Pigeon
over the Rio Grande. It
was rather
windy by time we left Chapeņo so we altered our plans to try for
White-collared Seedeaters further up-river, and proceeded on instead to Santa
Ana NWR and, then, Sabal Palm Audubon Sanctuary
- where we had very few birds as valley birding (at least for me) is
very much dependent
on being in the right place in the morning hours.
3 January (171 species)
My brother and I started on
the Upper Texas coast (UTC) on 3 January with the Purple Sandpiper that
had been wintering at the Quintana Jetty near Freeport We then looked without
success for the Great Black-backed Gull that had been discovered by Mike Austin in
nearby Sargent on the San Bernard CBC. From there, we proceeded
over to East Beach in Galveston and Bolivar Flats to look for (also
unsuccessfully) a first-winter Glaucous
Gull. It was really too nice a day for gulls though we did pick up an adult
Lesser Black-backed Gull near
Surfside along the way. We ended the long day around dusk, standing deep in the marsh at Bolivar Flats, pishing
in and being
surrounded be an army of 20+ Nelsen's Sharp-tailed Sparrows, followed
shortly by my brother locating 2 Short-eared Owls over the marsh right as the sun disappeared for good.
4 January (183 species)
I slept just about an hour at my parents' house
in the Woodlands (leaving my brother there) and
then headed out by myself in the wee hours of the 4th to Ft.
Worth to join Martin Reid's search for Smith's Longspurs. We didn't have
any luck with Smith's Longspurs, but we did manage to locate a single LeConte's Sparrow as
well as a Chestnut-collared Longspur. I spent most of the
rest of the day
driving west (ending up near Monahans) with a stop at Lake Colorado City
State Park, where I did manage to find the
Surf Scoter that had been
present for a few days.
5 January (216 species)
January 5th (and the morning
of the 6th) would end up being one of my best days of the year. I
spent the morning of 5 January birding the Davis Mountains Preserve with Mark
Adams, Mark Lockwood, Dave & Linda Hedges, and Carol Edwards & John Gee up
in the higher elevations near Bridge Gap. The winter of 2002-2003 had
many irruptive species and we ran
across a group of Cassin's
Finches, 1 Red-naped Sapsucker, 1 female Williamson's Sapsucker, 1
Townsend's Solitaire,
Red-breasted Nuthatches and Band-tailed Pigeons among other birds. The
bird of the year to that point had to be the flock of 20+ Clark's Nutcrackers seen first by
Carol as we waited
at Bridge Gap for them to arrive (4-5 birds had been seen a few days
earlier at 11.30am -
which is exactly when Carol saw our birds). I spent the rest of the day
with Mark Lockwood, initially
searching unsuccessfully for Pinyon Jays around Limpia Crossing.
However, we did manage to find the wintering Lewis'
Woodpecker in town (Fort Davis) and the wintering/visiting
White-winged Scoters on Balmorhea Lake (found by Mark only about 30 seconds before the
took off around the
lake never to be seen again).
6 January (223 species)
On the evening of the 5th,
Carolyn Ohl-Kolb kindly put me up at her place at Terlingua Ranch in the
Christmas Mountains. She had
seen a female Costa's
Hummingbird the previous few days but this day was cold and windy and
there was no
Costa's to be had, though I did watch two
Anna's Hummingbirds around her
feeders. I returned to Limpia Crossing in the Davis Mountains to try
again for Pinyon Jays, and was rewarded with a group of about 50
Pinyon
Jays after an hour of driving that area. I made it back to
Austin that evening and stayed at home for the first time that year.
7 January (239 species)
I started out first thing on
7 Jan in West Columbia (Brazoria Co) where
Charlie Brower met
with my dad and I. Charlie has been banding hummingbirds were a few
years and had graciously arranged for us to try for an Allen's he had
banded a few days earlier. We went over to Mary Vancil's house and in a few
minutes got some nice
looks at the Allen's Hummingbird that Charlie had measured and
color-banded. My dad
returned home (this was Texas state bird #499 for him) and I went up along
Surfside (where I added Northern Gannet)
and stopped in Galveston Island State Park. I was able to find 3 Palm Warblers
along the trail on the bayside of the park, . I've seen Palm
Warblers at this spot just about every time I've looked for them here in
winter since 1980. I made another stop
at East Beach in Galveston and then Bolivar Flats where I was once again
unsuccessful in my efforts to locate the wintering Glaucous
Gull in the area. I ended the day at Anahuac NWR, where I found an over-wintering
Western
Kingbird and 5
Gray Catbirds. I returned home to Austin for the evening.
8 January (245 species)
January 8th was spent in west
central Texas, in the area around OH Ivie Reservoir. Terry Maxwell
had discovered three Red-throated Loons on the reservoir the previous
day and I spent much of the day trying to relocate them - but was not
successful in my efforts. I did add a handful of year birds
though, with the most interesting being a Prairie Falcon near the town
of Millersview, south of the reservoir.
9 January (246 species)
I spent a few hours on the morning
of the 9th looking for a Northern Shrike
reported near
White River Lake (east of Lubbock) but could not find one. From there, I went over to
Muleshoe NWR and
searched a couple hours unsuccessfully (crawling on my hands, knees and
stomach in some
dense cedar breaks) for Long-eared Owls. At Paul's Lake on the refuge, I did find a
white Sandhill'ish
Crane (likely a Sandhill X Whooping hybrid) amongst the thousands of cranes
there. I had
seen at least 1 new year
bird every day so far in 2003 and that streak was in jeopardy on this day until
5.15pm, when I
ran across 2 Pine Siskins at the picnic area near the refuge
headquarters. I traveled
(via New Mexico) to stay in El Paso that evening.
10 January (253 species)
On 10 January, I started the morning at Hugh & Sally Jameson's place in El
Paso. They've been
hosting a female Varied Thrush for over a month and I was able to see
the bird first on
my own briefly and then had some really close looks, from inside the
Jameson's home (along
with Barry Zimmer and his VENT group) as it came in to feed and drink water.
Barry had found
a drake Eurasian Wigeon a couple days prior at Tornillo Reservoir east
of El Paso, and
that was my next
stop. After about 30 minutes of scanning thru mostly American Wigeon at
the reservoir, I
came upon the
bird and got some distant photos of it. My next stop was also successful
- the Ft.
Hancock Cemetery for Sage Thrashers thanks to the advice of Jim Paton
who indicates that
this is perhaps the only reliable spot for the bird in El Paso &
Hudspeth counties. I
then visited nearby McNary Reservoir (where I was able to see 2 California Gulls) before returning to
El Paso and
birding around town for the rest of the day.
11 January (258 species)
I started out birding around El Paso
on the 11th - where I found a Green-tailed Towhee at the Ft
Bliss Sewage
Ponds - before heading over to the Dell City area, just west of the
Guadalupe Mountains. Thanks to directions
from Charles
Easley & Kelly Bryan, I was able to find a Sage Sparrow along 1576
southeast of town (I
would later see 2 more Sage Sparrows this day at Williams Ranch, GMNP).
I spent a few
hours wandering around the hillside at the Frijole Ranch, Guadalupe
Mountains
National Park (GMNP) in search
of Juniper
Titmouse but didn't have any luck. As the weather in the rest of the
state was rather
awful and this bird is a troublesome one for me (and it was for Brush &
Petra in their
big year), I decided to stay in White City, New Mexico that evening so I could
start out the following morning on the
Dog Canyon side of GMNP, a spot where I usually have better luck with
the titmouse.
12 January (260 species)
As soon as the sun hit Dog Canyon
on the morning on 12 January, I was able to pish in a
Juniper Titmouse just a few yards from the New Mexico state line. From
there I traveled
to nearby Red Bluff Lake where I stopped briefly and added Common Goldeneye
for the year. I then spent the rest of the
day driving the many miles towards Ft
Worth.
13 January (263 species)
The 13th was a gloomy day where I never saw the sun - sometimes the kind of
day that is good
for gulls. I started at Pier 121 Marina at Lake Lewisville in the DFW
area and had very short
looks at what I
believe may have been the first-winter Thayer's Gull reported by Brian
Gibbons and Derek
Hill. Thayer's Gull is a tough bird for me and I decided to leave it as
"probable" and hope for another chance later in the year. My next target - Glaucous Gull - had been reported at Cedar Hills
Marina, Lake
Texoma by Ross Rasmussen a few days earlier. This bird (which I had
searched for twice
already this year near East Beach in Galveston) was a rather easy "tick" as I was
able to locate the
bird before I even got out the car. From Lake Texoma, I traveled over to
Lake Tawakoni,
where I spent the rest of the day scanning the Common Loons
from Holiday
Marina for Pacific Loons that had also been reported by Ross. However,
both the light
and distance I could see were limited by the severely overcast and foggy
skies and I was
unable to find any loons other than Common Loons.
14 January (267 species)
14 January was another day without sun. I spent most of the day (until 2pm)
around Wright
Patman Lake near Texarkana scanning unsuccessfully around the dam for both Little and
Common
Black-headed Gulls (both reported in late December) amongst the hundreds of Bonaparte's
Gulls. I had no luck on
either of the rare gulls though I did add some east Texas woodland birds
- Brown-headed Nuthatch,
Eastern Towhee, and Fox
Sparrow. I ended the day at Lake O'The Pines. Nothing all the unusual
at the lake,
though I did add Fish Crow for the year and counted over 46 Common Loons in a single
scan of the lake.
I did photograph an interesting gull which is probably nothing more
exciting than just
another odd-looking (aren't they all?) Herring Gull.
Thus, my two week journey around the state ended
was over. It was time very well spent that had gone better than I
could have hoped and would set the tone for the rest of the year. I
had traveled over 5800 miles, ran across 267 species and
successfully
chased 8 review birds (Golden-crowned Warbler, Greater Pewee, Blue
Mockingbird, Purple
Sandpiper, Clark's Nutcracker, Allen's Hummingbird, Varied Thrush,
Eurasian Wigeon). I realized at this point that I would not be
sleeping that much for the remainder of the year.
16 January (270
species)
Before work on the morning of
the 16th, I stopped by Hills Prairie, a
community just
outside Bastrop and located 5 Rusty Blackbirds at a spot they've been
regular at since Brush
Freeman found them there in early December. At lunch time, I stopped by
Old Settler's
Park in Round Rock and quickly found a Greater Scaup that had also been
reported (by a
few others) since late November/early December.
18 January (275 species)
On 18 January, I started for the
second time this year at Chapeņo along the Rio Grande, anxiously hoping for
Brown Jays. This time, I was rewarded after only an hour of waiting to
have a few birds
fly into the feeders at the El Rio RV Park. From there, I dashed over to
Zapata City Park
where I was quickly able to add a single White-collared Seedeater near
the pond where a group of these birds are residents. I then made the long drive over to Boca Chica
beach. I
scanned the beach from the mouth of the Rio Grande to the Boca Chica
jetty in hopes of
finding the 1st winter Great Black-backed Gull that had been seen there
the past week or
so but couldn't find it. Thinking maybe that it had headed over to the
Brownsville Dump, I
traveled over there and spent 1.5 hours scanned the gulls there without
running into it,
though I did manage to run across both an adult California Gull and a
2nd winter Lesser
Black-backed Gull. It was getting late in the afternoon and I traveled
over to Pharr to
search for Red-crowned Parrots. I wandered around some residential areas
until I finally
found 2 birds very near Allen Williams' place (the home of the Blue
Mockingbird). I
ended the day walking around Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park until after dark where I was
able to get a
couple of Pauraques but didn't hear nor see any signs of the Ferruginous
Pygmy-Owls that
have been there this winter (and had been seen earlier that day by
others).
19 January (284 species)
I started out at dawn on the
19th back at Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park where I
quickly got both Norhtern
Beardless-Tyrannulet and Clay-colored Robin in the tent camping area, as
well as
Nashville Warblers and Indigo Buntings. My next stop was Anzalduas
County Park where I
ran into the large wintering warbler flock, which that day included a
female Black-throated
Gray Warbler. The Greater Pewee was still present, as I first heard it
calling and then
watched it from very close range chasing bugs near the warbler flock. I
proceeded over
to Santa Ana NWR to search for Tropical Parula. A few other folks were there
looking as well
and it seemed everybody else was able to get on the bird while I was
there but it managed
to elude me. I decided to head back to Boca Chica to give the Great
Black-backed Gull
another shot before I
started back home. It turned out to be a good decision as I ran into
the
first winter bird
north of where the road ends. It flew off into the surf and remained
about 100 yards out
with some Ring-billed Gulls for the 30 minutes that I watched it. I
started the long
drive home and had nice looks at a Merlin, a Ferruginous Hawk and a
Black-bellied
Whistling Duck along 77 before it got too dark to bird.
21 January (284 species)
I decided to give Granger
area with its winter-resident Mountain Plovers a try
before work.
Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate as the fog was as thick as
pea soup and I saw
very little before I had to get back to the office.
26-28 January (289
species)
The weekend of 27-28 January I spent time down on the central coast. I was in
Corpus Christi most
of the day Saturday but my only birding was driving 22 miles down Padre
Island National
Seashore and not finding very many birds. On Sunday, I had planned to
jump on an
off-shore fishing boat out of Port Aransas but the weather and the seas
(7 foot waves)
were really nasty and the trip was cancelled. Instead, I worked the
beach between Port
Aransas and Mustang Island and also made a quick trip over to San Jose
Island. It was
still very windy and rainy so I started heading home the long way - via
Aransas NWR
(where I picked up my year Whooping Cranes), then to Attwater NWR (for
my year Cinnamon Teal) and spent the
last hour and a
half of daylight at Fayette Lake. I waited for darkness to fall in an
open field that
was adjacent to some good-looking wooded Am. Woodcock habitat and was
rewarded with
several "peent"s and a couple of shadowy looks at woodcocks flying
around the field.
I've also visited the Granger area twice in the past week for
Mountain
Plover and have not
been able to locate the birds, though I have gotten looks at both
Lapland and McCown's
Longspurs.
31 January (290
species)
On the last day of January, I
decided to head downtown (Austin) after work to look for Monk Parakeets.
These exotics have become established for a few years now and are
"countable". There is a group of them present year-round near the
softball fields on the east end of Town Lake and I was able to see a few
of these birds with little problem.