Birding in Southern Texas Winter 2011

One of the big reasons that we chose to travel to southern Texas recently was to experience the only other crane species in our hemisphere, the Whooping Crane. The best way to see them is to get on a boat out of Rockport or Port Aransas which allows for close viewing, as in this picture of an adult going back to the water's edge to thrash and eat this Blue Crab. There are only a few hundred of these magnificent cranes left in the wild, having been rescued from the brink of extinction, just like the California Condors. Unlike the condors, these cranes do not need the same intensive level of intervention to survive. Still, they could be one natural or unnatural disaster away, as they nest in northern Alberta and only winter here in Aransas NWR, thus being reliant on safe breeding, migrating, and wintering areas. Luckily, after several bad years for crab, this one has been excellent, which allows the adults to fatten up sufficiently to have offspring later this year. It's a delicate web: there needs to be fresh water mixing in the right quantities with the salt water of the marsh to have the crabs in abundance.
Generally you don't see these cranes easily from coastal spots, but we lucked into a pond and meadow towards sunset that had not only Whooping but also a small group of Sandhill Cranes! Along with dozens of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks (yes, they do whistle) flying about.
The other reason we came to Texas in wintertime is for regional rarities and other new birds for us. In this we did quite well, seeing 12 life birds which puts us just shy of 600 species seen in the lower 48 states. Of these, 3 were 'mega-rare', having been found and reported at locations that were fairly easy to access. These 3 are Mexican birds that only occasionally stray across the Rio Grande, being the Crimson-collared Grosbeak, the White-throated Thrush, and the Black-vented Oriole. Four others of the 12 are present year-around but only in small numbers in limited habitat (especially in winter): Tropical Parula, Groove-billed Ani, Audubon's Oriole, and White-collared Seedeater. Then there were the two psittacids that have established themselves in the lower valley, the Green Parakeet and the Red-crowned Parrot, both of which we saw at our wonderful B&B in McAllen (more about that later). The subtly-plumaged Clay-colored Thrush used to be rare, but has over the years become much more numerous and easy to see (we saw 6 in all at 3 sites).
Some of these birds may be seen in my picasa album at https://picasaweb.google.com/theairyway.
The weather was generally quite good, temperatures in the 60s and 70s, except for 3 days in the lower valley with highs around 33 degrees. Only one of these cold days grounded us, when we hung out in the excellent McAllen library and a coffee house. The other two days we managed the Audubon's Oriole on oranges at the Roma birding center (along with Altamiras), and the Tropical Parula at Quinta Mazatlan, also feeding on oranges with the Orange-crowned Warblers. Even the Buff-bellied Hummingbird was out at Roma on the freezing morning, trying to get something from the frozen hummer feeder (it was quickly thawed by the personnel and replaced).
We were quite fortunate to find some other rare birds, at least for the season or locality. Birding around Corpus Christi on January 28 we located a first-year male Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and in a city park found a Tennessee Warbler. Both of these species are not expected at all in winter. I reported them to the appropriate people in Texas. Later, while out on a field trip with a group in the Laredo area, I helped to ID a distant Western Grebe which is quite rare east of the Pecos.
McAllen proved to be an excellent base for the entire lower Rio Grande Valley, being about 2 hours driving time from Roma in the west to Laguna Atascosa and Brownsville in the east. There are wonderful sites within a half-hour: Santa Ana NWR, Bentsen SP, Estero Llano SP, and many others. We greatly enjoyed our stay with the Gomez's at the Gypsy Birder's Retreat. They were very generous and gracious hosts, and we enjoyed our conversations together. They provided excellent breakfast and lunch goodies, with variety and home-baked treats. Check them out on Facebook at urbanbirder.mcallen or email Rhonda at Rhondagmz@gmail.com.
I'll probably have more to say about some of our days in southern Texas, but will end for now. We will remain indebted to the friendly folks there, birders and non-birders alike, for a great stay, despite some depressing reminders of our border woes, especially in Laredo.

The Traveler's Prayer



Near the Tarifa town walls

 Kathleen spotted this resolution as we walked around the very old town walls of Tarifa, Spain, the southernmost point in western Europe, being just north of 36 degrees latitude (the same latitude as Nashville TN, Grand Canyon Village on the south rim, and Kettleman City CA, for all you I-5 junkies). Actually we did not have to repeat this mantra very often, driving independently around southern Spain proved to be, for the most part, quite easy and even relaxing. We were armed with a good atlas (1:300K), and also Hertz's 'NeverLost' (ha). The problem, of course, in the small towns is that it is difficult to find street signs, even on foot, much less while driving, there is rarely anywhere even to pull over safely or legally, and the pronunciation of neither "Jill", the american voice on our navigation, or "Emily", the English one, was easy to comprehend. We settled on Emily, because we were laughing too much listening to Jill mangle Spanish. (I know, I know, we should have kept with the Spanish voice, but that presented its own problems, and wasn't as entertaining). Emily was pretty good, and less obtrusive than Jill, but had a way of stretching out the road names to comical lengths, eg., Andalucia became "Ahhhn  dahhhh louuuuu  teeeee  ahhhhhhhhhhhh". And, naturally, these towns laid out a millenium ago were not about square corners. The castillo was first, built on the high or strategic point, and the roads nuzzled around this point as tightly as possible. Many are so narrow, that I am sure that there was less than an inch on either side of our Ford Focus, which does not look so large in the American landscape, but is just a bit too wide in Spain. It had a lot of room, and could take nearly all our luggage in the enclosed back section, and gave us good mileage. It had terrible traction, however, and off-road driving was more momentous than necessary. One near 'cracking' point was driving out of Tarifa, we had to go up a steep cobblestone street and start from a stopped position at the top. I could not get enough traction to make it up in a safe manner, so had to back down the hill, and go out of town from a different route. The other near cracking point was in a dastardly parking garage in Granada, where I lost all of my normally quite confident and skilled driving ability, and had to give the attendent 5 euros to do my maneuvering for me.  I was so proud to return that car with only the scratches on it that I started with (obviously the result of scraping parking garage white pillars!).
Mostly, though, the roads were good, the weather pleasurable, the people friendly, and the scenery excellent. No matter how very small the village, there would always be an open bar, which would serve a uniformly great cafe con leche for a euro. Giles Tremlett, in his wonderful book Ghosts of Spain, says that Spain has more than 138,000 bars, more than the rest of western Europe combined! These are frequently good for breakfast, lunch, and tapas dinners. There is always a cigarette smoke issue, either barely tolerable or impossible to live with. Apparently the laws are changing there as well, but it is hard to believe that such an entrenched habit could be realistically curtailed quickly.