Update Since Texas

     Let's see, its been a little over 2 weeks since I've returned home from Texas and since my last post. It has certainly been a busy 2 weeks with school starting up again. Ohio has been uhhhh, cold. Quite cold. Oh and snowy! I am not a fan of either. The birds here though are good just like always. Ohio will always be my home and I think it is one of the best birding states in the country. I am lucky to be apart of Ohio birding. One of my goals for the year was to add to my Ohio life list (320 would be nice) and still post a decent/respectable number for the year in Ohio (maybe 275-280). I had some catching up to do after being gone for the first 10 days of the year! The Rogue Birder gang and I went on the annual OOS trip to The Wilds on the 17th in hopes of scoring a Golden Eagle, an Ohio lifer for me. That day had beautiful weather and 2 beautiful Golden Eagles soaring high in the sky! Score! I've also been slowly but surely building my Ohio year list and am now up to 96 species with a few good ones. I've also missed on a couple birds like White-Winged Crossbill and Hoary Redpoll and I've had to rescue a few fellow birders from a multi car mess one day! It has been quite an eventful couple of weeks and I've been adjusting and coming down from my Texas high. The posts will become more regular from now on.

     In regards to my ABA list as of Jan 28th, I've added 20 species since being home bringing me to 255 on the year! Highlights include a trip up to Eastlake Power Plant (after the car crash...) to see a cute little Harlequin Duck, a run to Preble County Ohio (aka the middle of nowhere) to see a distant Snowy Owl out in a corn field, and stumbling upon a massive flock of 30.000 gulls at Huron Pier with Greg and Danno and seeing absurd numbers of both Iceland and Glaucous Gulls in the flock. It's been a nice few weeks of Ohio birding. So far Golden Eagle has been the only Ohio lifer for me but Saturday, Chris and I are planning a trip to Toledo. I HAVE to give that dang Hoary another try!! Fingers crossed and stay tuned!

Angel Gull and Back to Ohio

     Final leg of our journey back home from Texas. We stayed in Muskogee, Oklahoma for the night and got up early to head north towards a certain bird that we were calling Angel cause its a jynx to say the real name. The first 3 hours of the drive were dull until I checked on my and saw that Angel was still there today! Over the course of the next 4 hours, excitement slowly started building with the pass of each mile. 180, 120, 60, 30, 15,5... Finally! After about 7 hours of driving we arrive to see Angel sitting on top of a Marina roof, just chilling. We got it! Now I can say, Angel is an Ivory Gull but it sure did look like an Angel. A very rare bird to be in the lower 48 so many people were jumping at the chance to see this gorgeous bird. A true stunner in its all white adult plumage. Normally found way up north in the cold Arctic Circle, this bird had caught some winds and drifted all the way down to the Mississippi River in Quincy, IL. Still can't believe the beauty of this gull. We were very lucky to have seen this bird. Things had to fall into place perfectly and it was not really out of the way on our return trip. A life bird for all of us and a fantastic way to end such a great trip. Also seen there was my lifer Eurasian Tree Sparrow, how convenient. We also picked up a few more year birds while we were there and on the rest of the trip home. I am now finally back in Ohio and start school again on the 12th. Ugh! Oh well, it was an absolute blast starting the year off like this. The return voyage home was ridiculous. Seeing a Brown Booby (tropical bird) and an Ivory Gull (arctic bird) in 2 days was insane and they both happen to fall along the route home! Couldn't have been more perfect! Big thanks to Dan and Shawn for all the fun on this trip. Looking forward to the next one but for now, its time for school and a few Ohio birds.

     Just a few stats from the past 10 days. Birds seen, 235 species which is good enough to currently be ranked 3rd in the ABA according to eBird behind Cameron Carver and Dan (stupid Virginia Rail). I saw 67 life birds on this trip bringing my current life list to 390! We traveled a total of about 4097 miles in 10 days and we were in 11 states! (I asked Dan to take a quick 5 min detour so we could go into Kansas since I've never been there). Quite an insane trip. The next weeks will be spent in Ohio while Dan flies off to California to continue his lower 48 big year. Please follow him along at his blog, http://www.birdingthecandle.blogspot.com/

     Oh and I am still sorting through pictures and working on my flickr page, may take a few more days! haha.

My First Boob(y)!

    A 4 hour drive this morning from Loredo TX up to Lake Travis was the first stop to look for the main target of the day. Brown Booby. This bird has been hanging out at this lake for a while now. We arrive around 10:30ish and try to figure out where to start looking for this thing. Shawn's initial reaction upon seeing the size of the lake was "holy &#$@, we are never gonna find it". This might take a while. Oh and did I mention it was cold! Like 28 degrees in Austin Texas where the average temp for this time of year here is 61. We scope this lake over and over and over again and can't find this bird anywhere so finally I just start wandering around to look for sparrows and stuff. I wandered pretty far and was freezing so Shawn and Dan came looking for me in the van. It's a good thing I went down this ridge because as we were driving out and looking at a sparrow, Dan looked up and spotted the booby flying right by the van! Perfect timing. If I hadn't wandered off and if Dan hadn't looked up we probably would've given up. We track this stunning boob till it lands on a stump just off shore so walk out towards it. While we are out there watching it, I found myself thinking about how insane it that I see my first booby species when its 28 degrees outside. Its just plain stupid. This is a tropical bird! BOOBY BABY!! Life bird for both Dan and me! I love sharing a lifer with Dan since he doesn't have the opportunity much anymore cause he already has a great list. This was all I really wanted from today so I was happy but we did bird some other places in the area and scored a few more year birds including a couple of my favorites, Western Scrub-Jay and a cute little Burrowing Owl. Missed on McCown's Longspur hunt. Maybe another time. Its late now and we have another long day of travel tomorrow with another great potential bird! Current year total is 225! Looking forward to tomorrow and finishing this amazing trip on a positive note. Lots of miles and lots of birds seen.

Final 2 Days in the Valley

     Well today and yesterday were our last days in the south Texas area. Tomorrow we start our trek back to the bitterly cold Ohio. Bummer, These last 2 days have been great as we scored many of our targets we had for these 2 days. We focused on Texas specialties that we missed during the first few days and picked up a few other year birds and nice pictures in the process.

     We started Tuesday at Sabal Palm bright and early. Main targets were Tropical Parula and Groove-Billed Ani. Trop Par was probably a long shot but this was our best shot at finding one on this trip. No recent reports really. We located a few feeding warblers and a Northern Parula but no Tropical. While walking on one of the trails we heard this call note that seemed interesting. Dan got on the bird first and realized that it was the Dusky-Capped Flycatcher that has been hanging out for a couple weeks now. I got a brief look before it took off. It continued to call in the distance but never showed again so no picture. Dang. Nice pick up though. Hopefully I can get a pic in Arizona later this year. Towards the end of our time here Dan and I decided to hike a different trail and we found 3 Groove-Billed Ani!! A very uncommon to rare bird here in the winter. Finally, a life bird for Dan on the trip! I am very happy for him and that I got to share that one with him. I'm bummed that Shawn missed them though. Oh well, he has them as a life bird already. From here we went looking for Aplomado Falcon at Old Port Isabel Rd. Too bad it was all flooded and we couldn't get there. We did however get to watch a Cactus Wren on a Cactus! It was certainly one of my favorite birds of the trip. I wasn't expecting to see this species on this trip but I'm glad I did. From there we hit South Padre Island and picked up a few more birds but missed the Purple Gallinule. Then we went looking for Aplo Falc again, this time at Laguna. We got some helpful tips from a lady at the nature center who was just licking her lips at the thought of those gorgeous falcons. We walk out there and located a pair of Falcons way out in the stratosphere! After a while they flew in a little closer and allowed for better looks and an IDable picture. Great bird to close out the day!

       Wednesday Jan. 7th, our last day in the Valley. We were still missing some important valley birds but we had a good plan to target them. First stop, Anzalduas Park. Right away we get on a Ringed Kingfisher so a brief look before it takes off out of sight and into Mexico. Check. This park had quite a few birds in it including a few gorgeous Vermillion Flycatchers. We located a small feeding flock and Shawn spots a small gray bird, Verdin! Excellent, check. On our way out we spot a distant hawk on a telephone post, Gray Hawk! Check. Next stop, a quick run through at Falcon Dam to pick up Pyrrhuloxia. We check the feeders behind the Rec Hall and find a few of them within a few minutes of being there. Check. We are on a wicked good pace and scoring every bird we wanted to but we still have the 2 most difficult to locate left. First, DeWind's feeders to hope for an appearance by Audubon's Oriole. This bird shows here regularly but is very sporadic in its visits so it might take hours before one shows. We were running out of time and still had another bird to see. Luckily we had a gorgeous bird show after about 30 minutes of feeder watching. Check. (On a side note, these feeders are absolutely incredible. There were at least 15 Great Kiskadee in my sight at one time and a ton of the beautiful Altimira Oriole). Last stop, White-Collared Seedeater. We had no idea how long it will take to locate this code 3 species and we had dwindling light. Maybe a little over an hour left to search for them. We arrive at San Ygnacio Bird Sanctuary where a few have been recently. We walk past the gate and almost immediately get on a White-Collared Seedeater! Check!! We ended up seeing 4 of these cute tiny birds. I still can't believe how easy that was. Fantastic pick up to end the day. Stayed in Loredo tonight and getting up early to head north to Lake Travis in the Austin area where a Brown Booby has been hanging out for a while now. Fingers crossed. I had a fantastic time in southern Texas and we closed out by snagging everything we needed to!

Perfect Timing!

     Today was a day full of great timing and a lot of success. We decided to hit Goose Pond first thing in the morning to try for whooping crane which required us leaving at 4:45 from the hotel to get there around 8:15. I was running on about 3.5-4 hours of sleep. Great fun. Anyways, we get there and as soon as the little pond comes into view I spotted these 2 Whooping Cranes. They stuck out, huge white birds. Good thing we got there when we did because after 5 minutes they picked up and cruised right out of there. Our first good timing event of the day. While flying they were joined by 3 others for a total of 5 Whooping Cranes but they were soon out of site. Almost missed these spectacular birds. We did pick up a few other year birds on this stop like Vesper Sparrow, Common Loon, and Redhead. Finding these cranes quickly was a big boost for the day, now we could head south again by 9am and try for a few other birds. Our next stop, a rest stop on 281 on our way back to the valley. Target. Painted Redstart.



     It took us about 2.5 hours from the cranes to get to the rest stop on 281 where a Painted Redstart has been hanging out at. Yes I said a rest stop! We got there at about 11:30, way ahead of schedule. This was a pretty large area with lots of trees and a decent number of birds (of course, I mean it is Texas after all). So we are looking, and looking for this little guy but just finding other birds including my first Blue-Headed Vireo of the year. After a while we split up, Dan and Shawn go back towards the restrooms but I wanted to stay by the loop trail cause I had a feeling it would be there. Not long after I hear the chip call note! Look around. Boom. Painted Redstart. Absolutely stunning but this was no time to take pics or admire it. I had to find Dan and Shawn! I turn back and start booking it towards them. They got pretty far away. Shawn spots me running and immediately starts going to the loop. Now where is Dan? Of course he is so far away looking in a tree. Hey Dan! I got it over here! Soon we are all watching this gorgeous little guy. One of the prettiest birds I've ever seen and very friendly and active. Quick little bugger. We spend some extra time with him since we are ahead of schedule then back on the road. Bye pretty guy.

     One other bird of note from today was a Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher that Dan spotted along the road while we were driving to Edinburg! I was not expecting to get this bird on this trip since they really aren't in Texas in the winter months. I am extremely happy about getting it so I don't have to make a special trip later this year for it. Dan will probably just another one in Erie County, Ohio this year anyways though. He seems to have a knack for spotting these awesome birds!

     Since we have so much extra time we decided to stop at Edinburg Scenic Wetlands Park and do some birding on this beautiful Texas day. What a good choice. We ended up getting good looks at many nice species like Curve and Long-Billed Thrasher. I also managed to snag my lifer Lesser Goldfinch which was very nice. This place had quite a few birds hoping around in it and some nice new warblers for the year. Somehow we just kept adding more and more year birds the longer we birded there. Oh there's a Nashville Warbler. What's that? Oh Wilson's Warbler, It was kind of ridiculous actually. After we left that park with 7 new year birds, we headed south to a park that might give us a slim chance at Tropical Parula. Of course once we got there we discovered it is closed on Monday. Most of the parks in the area were closed today. Bummer, not even a chance to look for the parula. We now turned our focus to finding the two Texas special (and countable) parrot species. Green Parakeet and Red-Crowned Parrot. They can be tricky to nail down because you can only reliably get them when they are at their roost in the morning or coming in to roost at dusk. They are MIA throughout the rest of the day. Nobody really knows what happens to them. The hard part here was finding their roosting spot. We managed to figure out a good spot for Green Parakeet and thanks to help of Greg back home (command center) we were able to find the location for Red-Crowned as well within a few miles of each other. Green Parakeet first. We get there, look up and way out in the sky is a flock of them! Parrots fly in a loose flock and swirl around a lot. Incredibly noisy birds too. We chase the flock around until we get them perched on a wire. 300+ Green Parakeet was certainly a sight to see. If we weren't at that spot at the right time we would have missed them! Next stop, Red Crowned. We turn down the road we needed to and I looked up and was like "oh look there they are" as a flock was flying around. Again, perfect timing for these birds. We chased them around until they landed in a tree right around dusk. Score! Both targets here! Great way to finish the day strong! Covered another 400 miles today! Looking forward to tomorrow, a key day to really nail down some rarer birds in the valley on our best weather day. Year total is now 190.

Texas and the Valley Day 1

     Well I didn't do a post from yesterday and even as I right this one I am starting to realize how difficult it is to come back to a hotel after a long day of non stop birding/driving and then make lists, plan for the next day, go through pics, and then still find the energy to write a blog post. I have been bad about that to start the year but hopefully I can figure out how to do this in a timely fashion and on low energy. There is just soooo much to do here, its incredible. This post will cover the last 2 days and a lot has happened so it might be a long post! Now that we won't be driving through most of the nights I hope to have time and energy to catch up some post regularly down here.

     Jan 3rd, first stop: Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary. The weather report looked iffy for today with rain in the forecast and pretty chilly for Texas (52 degrees haha). Shorebirds, shorebirds, and more shorebirds!! I thought I was in heaven. Shorebirds are one of my favorite groups, probably second behind herons/egrets. Seeing shorebirds in this number in January was awesome! A few life birds were out there on those mudflats like Western Sandpiper and Long-Billed Curlew. There was virtually no light and light rain was on and off but it was good enough. We cruise up on a bird, boom! Mountain Plover! That was the main target for this stop. We couldn't have taken more than 2 steps out of the van when a Barn Owl just started booking it in the field behind us! Score. After this we headed to Anahuac NWR. We had a few birds on our minds to get there but mainly we were crossing our fingers that the rain would hold off!

     We knew that Vermillion Flycatcher had been somewhere at Anahuac for the past week or 2 and of course we wanted to see it. We didn't know where to start to look really though. We pull into the lot, get out and Dan goes "Hey look, Vermillion Flycatcher". Are you kidding me? There was a second bird playing around on the rail on the walkway to the nature center. Well I guess maybe we should start with the Auto Tour now and see what other goodies we can turn up. Most of the usual stuff really until a bird flew over and landed in a bush on the side. Dark Sparrow. A little pishing and he pops out for a second. Seaside Sparrow, bingo baby! Secret little bird who didn't like coming out in the open but with some patience we all got good looks at it. On with the tour. A little while later, Shawn shouts from the back seat about a bittern just standing out in the open across the little water ditch. Crazy! To make it even more crazy, just down the road Dan spotted another American Bittern literally on the side of the road about 15-20 feet from the car. Stupid looks at this thing. I guess you could say we had some fun at Anahuac. After a little convincing, I get Dan to say yes to checking out Bear Creek Park in the Houston area as the last stop to look for Greater Pewee since it won't be too much added driving time.

Why not take a selfie from the car with a Bittern when you have the chance!

     Bear Creek Park was all flooded but the sun came out and it was beautiful! After a little driving around and asking some questions we arrive at the Pewee spot. After about an hour, it starts getting dark but then we pick up on the "Pip pip" call note. A little dark out from any good pics but certainly good looks and this little guy would not shut up! Very good pickup, especially in Texas. Its late now but its time to head to the valley. Finally! We don't arrive until like 11:30 after 6ish hours of driving. 

    

     Jan 4th and my first day in the Valley! We decided to start in Estero Llano Grande. Walk in, White-Winged Dove, Golden-Fronted Woodpecker, Ladder-Backed Woodpecker, Buff-Bellied and Black-Chinned Hummingbird. Its gonna be a good time at this park! We joined up with a little bird hike that was going on with a few other people which was a fun time. It was cool to talk to people about this area and where I was from and how birding is in Ohio. There was another group there also escaping the cold, they were from Minnesota. I was just getting life birds at every turn! Its just like, oh once you're done with that Kiskadee there is an Inca Dove right there and a Pauraque on your right. Oh check out that Green Kingfisher and Yellow-Cronwned Night-Heron. I was doing all I could to keep up haha. 22. That's the number of lifers I got there this morning! Mary G. was with us and while we were there she got a call about a Blue Bunting over at Santa Ana NWR which is where we were planning on going next anyways. 

     No Bunting. Bummer. We did get good birds in the park though while we were searching for it. It is just a difficult bird to relocate since its so secretive. I don't think anybody ever did see it again. We did spend quite a few hours in that park. We got a tip about a Fulvous Whistling Duck in the park so we decided to give it a shot. No luck where it was suppose to be. Dang. We are all pretty tired and hungry at this point. We stopped in the nature to talk to the worker there really quick and he said the duck was found earlier today in a different pond. He said it was about a mile away but you had to walk there. He was wrong.... After a quick fuel, pit stop of poptarts for me, Dan and I decided to trek out there to look for this duck. Shawn stuck back to bird the nature center area. Let me just tell you something, it was much farther than a mile! It took us a solid 90+ minutes of power walking before we got backed to the car, it was at least 5 miles on already tired legs through mud. It sucked. Oh and on top of that, no duck still! Oh well, thats the way it goes. Gotta get up early (really early) so we can make it to Aransas at first light. Hoping for Whooping Crane tomorrow and other goodies! Maybe I'll have energy to post tomorrow too so these long posts don't happen anymore! Year total so far = 174, not too shabby but still a lot more to add while I'm down here! Gonna be a busy 4 more days!

The Start of a New Year

    The first day of the year involved pretty much all traveling. 869 miles to be exact! I started in Kettering, OH in the morning where Dan and Shawn came and picked me up at. That night I was staying in a hotel in Hammond, Louisiana. My first time ever being in LA (and also Mississippi but we only drove through that state). Ended up with 24 birds for day 1 which isn't bad considering pretty much the whole day was spent on a highway. (I did manage to rack up all of 16 birds in Ohio before I left). It is day 2 that was much more interesting.

    Jan. 2nd: Dan, Shawn and I got an early start, after not much sleep, and started to head West towards Texas. The night before, Dan and I had discussed some plans in the car (Shawn was sleeping) and we decided to try out Cameron Prairie NWR where a Eurasian Wigeon was being seen (don't worry, Shawn agreed to the plan when he woke up). We did however make a first stop at a gas station with a little pond that proved to be quite magical! Every few seconds we were finding a different bird and a new species for the year. That 15 min stop yielded close to 40 species including 2 lifers for me!! (Mottled Duck and Crested Caracara). Then we stopped at Lacassine NWR for about 2.5 hours. This spot was like a drive around auto tour and it also produced some really good birds for us like Anhigna (a lifer) and Merlin. After we finally got out of there, we arrived at Cameron and this place was pretty amazing. Another auto tour type thing, this one a smaller loop with water and shrubs on either side. The amount of birds present, especially ibis and herons and even raptors, were unreal! We could get so close to some of these birds without ever leaving the car. I've never seen anything like it and I had fantastic looks at all sorts of great species including, Eurasian Wigeon, Roseate Spoonbill, White and White-Faced Ibis, many duck species, and 2 of my favorites, Black-Necked Stilt and Tricolored Heron! We went to the nature center area after the auto tour loop and found a Cinnamon Teal (rare for this area) and we relocated the dark morph Ferruginous Hawk that has been hanging around for a few days now (another rarity for LA). We were on fire today! On the way to Texas in the evening, we picked up a few more year birds including a lifer for me, a gorgeous White-Tailed Kite!

     Today was unbelievable and I haven't even seen a single bird in Texas yet!! We ended the day notching 95 species (I think) which brings me to 103 on the year so far. A list can be found on the right hand side of the blog. I'm going to try my best to document as many species as I can with either video or recording or picture, and upload them to an album on my flickr page. Right now I'm a bit too tired to start the album but I will post a link when I do. Here are a few shots from today that I took and actually had the energy to look through. Shawn Collins has a lot more pics posted already from today (see link below and go check it out). I got to get to bed, another big day ahead of me tomorrow! Oh and we traveled another 309 miles today! Total mileage for the trip = 1178.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pghdjshawn

Dark Morph Ferruginous Hawk

Tricolored Heron, stunning!

Hungry Gator!

A lovely White Ibis

My lifer Anhinga