Total Species seen by Month's end: 496
Number of species added during month: 2
Miles Driven: 4937
Review Species Added:
Summary & Highlights:
6-7 September (494 species)
I spent the weekend
of September 6th-7th surveying several reservoirs in west central Texas, spending the
most time at Red Bluff Lake. My
target bird was Sabine's Gull as this was the start of the normal
fall window for juvenile birds to be migrating
thru interior North America. I did have any luck on the gull but I did have a fun
trip and saw a few interesting birds
(including a possible Ruff), though no new birds for the year.
Please refer to
my post to Texbirds for a
summary. I also photographed a juvenile
Short-billed Dowitcher
which is somewhat rare in western Texas.
13-15 September
(495 species)
Saturday morning the
13th, I repeated the same reservoir-to-reservoir checking (for
Sabine's Gulls) that I had done the
previous weekend, except that I cut out on visiting Lake JB
Thomas. The lakes were not as birdy on
this day and I ended up at Red Bluff Lake a couple hours earlier.
The wind was blowing hard over the
lake so I decided to spend the most time at Sandy Beach which is
in a protected cove.
Many of the same birds were still present, with the surprising
addition of a Sanderling as well as a
flock of plegadis Ibis which included one
Glossy Ibis, a rather rare
visitor to the Trans-Pecos region..
Sunday 14 September, I started out at Balmorhea State Park where I had a female American Redstart just
at first light prior to meeting up with Mark Lockwood at Balmorhea
Lake. We spent a couple
hours checking out the lake
(which wasn't terribly productive) and then returned to the state
park where we were pleased to
encounter a Philadelphia Vireo. I left Mark before noon and
headed over to the El Paso area reservoirs (Tornillo Reservoir and McNary Reservoir). On my first
telescope pass of McNary, I got on a distant
juvenile gull in the middle of the lake. I quickly moved
closer to the bird and was able to see that it was
indeed a Sabine's Gull
(#495 for the year). I watched the bird for a couple hours and was also able
to find an unexpected adult Caspian Tern.
Monday, with the stress
of having to find a Sabine's Gull out of the way, I again returned to Red Bluff Lake
which was rather calm and easier
to bird than 2 days earlier. As I scoped out the lake from
Sandy Beach, I picked out another
juvenile Sabine's Gull (!) working the western shoreline.
Other interesting birds I had that morning that I
hadn't had on the lake in the last 10 days included 3 Common Terns, a female Merlin,
an American Pipit and 2 Willets.
20-21 Sept (495 species)
Saturday morning the
20th, I found myself back out in west Texas for the third weekend
in a row. I spent all of
Saturday at Red Bluff Lake. Many
of the same birds were present as I had seen the previous 2 weeks,
though I was able to add 4 new
species of shorebirds to bring my Red Bluff count for the month to
21. The most interesting of these
new shorebirds was an unexpectedly large flock of 22
Red-necked Phalaropes.
Sunday I met up again
with Mark Lockwood and we spent some time birding Balmorhea Lake
as well as the road to Boy
Scout Ranch in the foothills of the Davis Mountains. We didn't run across anything unusual though we
did enjoy watching a Peregrine
Falcon dive-bombing several other birds out over the lake.
26-29 Sept (496 species)
The pelagic trip out of
Port Isabel on Friday the 26th brought me the most exciting bird of the year.
Having seen all of the regularly
expected pelagic species, I was hoping for possibly one of the
occasional rarities that has been found one
time or more in the last 5 years or so - birds like Red-billed
Tropicbird, Greater Shearwater or
perhaps an Arctic Tern. Needless to say, while still in
relatively shallow water at 9.30ish AM,
everyone was completely (and happily) surprised to have an
albatross fly off the water amid a group
of Cory's Shearwaters and Masked Boobies. Amid the
excitement and clicking of cameras,
the bird was identified as an adult
Yellow-nosed Albatross,
likely to be the fourth document record
for the state, and the first one that had ever been found on a
deepwater birding trip off of
Texas waters. The rest of the trip turned out to rather
"usual" with a few groups of Band-rumped
Storm-Petrels and a few Bridled Terns.
The rest of the weekend
was also adventurous - though for the wrong reasons. My
intentions were to drive up the coast
that Friday evening to bird the upper Texas coast for
Black-throated Blue Warbler. However,
I started having clutch problems and could only make it as far as
Kingsville that evening.
Saturday morning, my car and I limped a little bit further north
and I finally ended up having to get my car
towed into Corpus Christi where I somehow found a mechanic who promised to
get my clutch replaced by
the end of the day. They worked all day and at around 8pm
everything appeared to be working
until they decide to adjust the clutch pedal under the dashboard. Somehow, this activity
ended up breaking a safety switch and they were never able to get my car
started again. The mechanics ended up driving me to a motel around 12.30am in the morning.
I stayed in Corpus
Christi on
Sunday the 28th, spending some time with friends of mine. I
rented a car and started back to Austin
that afternoon when I got calls from both Brush Freeman and Willie
Sekula telling me that Mike Overton had
found a Yellow-faced Grassquit at Santa Ana NWR earlier that day.
I hesitated for a bit and then
turned around, heading towards Santa Ana, and ended up staying in Alamo that night.
Monday morning 29
September, I
started walking the road at Santa Ana NWR while it was still dark
and ended up near the spot where
Mike had seen the bird at around 7.30am. Amid the morning
chorus, I heard an usual trill a few
times that reminded me of the strange sounds I had heard when I
had seen last year's Yellow-faced Grassquit
that spent some time at Bentsen Rio-Grande State Park. I
heard this sound back in the mesquite
several times over the next 20 minutes but was never able to find
the bird. A few other birders
showed up and nobody was able to relocate it by time I left a few
hours later (though Andrew Spencer
- who I met and birded with for awhile and who is also the big
year record-holder for the
state of Colorado - would refind the bird that afternoon a good
distance away on another part of the
refuge). I returned to Corpus Christi that afternoon and picked up
my car and finally made my back to
Austin that evening.