Am I blue?

Friday, November 9th, John's field trip left at 5 AM again, back to the Upper Rio Grande Valley. No Red-Billed Pigeon or Muscovy Duck, but some nice pictures of birds John has already seen. He is still at 672 for his big year, 706 for his life bird list and 611 plus decent photos of bird species taken this year. Not bad for an old geezer who is blind in one eye and mostly deaf.

I had signed up for Birding by Ear but didn't want to go to Santa Ana two days in a row, so managed to switch to Southmost Preserve in Eastern Brownsville. Anyone can go there if they call ahead to the manager to arrange a visit. We got to go behind the border fence. It is anything but a solid barrier. There are gaps at every road. The smugglers are funneled right past the preserve's headquarters. Not good. The preserve has lots of Sabal Palms and a working grapefruit ranch that brings in revenue. The border fence displaced about three hundred palms during construction. The Southmost Preserve successfully transplanted about half of them. Other preserves got the rest of those palms.

The preserve has a spider web of dirt roads. You definitely will need a map! We didn't see much, but had a wealth of warblers, Yellow-Throated, Nashville, Common Yellowthroat, Yellow-Rumped, Orange-Crowned, Wilson's and Black-and-White, PLUS, a leader spotted a heavier, skulky warbler. I got on it too and we saw a bright split eye ring! MacGillivray's! The other leader, Derek, finally saw it too. That's pretty far east for a western warbler.

Derek has lead field trips during the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival for all of it's twenty years. It may be the oldest festival in the USA. It is certainly well run.

We didn't fly to Miami. We decided to stay overnight and try Santa Ana on our own in the morning. We ate at Longhorn Cattle Co BBQ and Steakhouse Friday night. Nice! Saturday, November 10th, we got to Santa Ana at 8 AM. We spent about two hours on the tower, Harris's Hawks, Peregrine Falcon, Red-Tailed, Kestrels, Vultures and Crested Caracaras flew by. One hawk was dipping into the trees for several minutes, flying about 50 feet into the wind, then dipping into the trees again. It had two bright white bars on its tail so I got hopeful it might be the Hook-Billed Kite. Never mind, the book says it has two DULL white bars on its tail. Grump.

We climbed down from the tower to go to Pintail Lakes where the HBK had been seen 5 days before. There was a lot of activity in the bushes around the little parking lot at the tower. I could hear White-Eyed Vireos and drifted right to follow them while John stayed in the corner. Right in front of me, a Blue-Headed Vireo appeared. JOHN! JOHN! I spluttered. He got over to me too late. Argh! Not another glimpse, though we searched the area another hour. John will have to get it elsewhere. I'm so blue! We did get nice looks at a Beardless Tyrannulet. What a drab little bird. Cute call. We never did get over to Pintail Lakes, but the kite wasn't seen there anyway.

We drove to Austin Saturday afternoon. Sunday, John changed his flight so that he would fly out of Austin to Philly, Monday, instead of Miami to Philly, Tuesday. The car rental agency showed that all cars were booked, but at the counter, John did get one. He drove to Connecticut because the Motel 6's in New Jersey were not available. Probably, Sandy, the big storm, is the culprit. I need to verify that John's pelagic on the 17th is still a go.

Hi, Edna!

Whither shall we wander?

The Louisiana tour was over. On our own again. Should we go east towards Miami, or west towards Texas? Susan, also on the tour, mentioned she was heading for the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in Harlingen TX. I mentioned it to John. Susan also asked if we needed a Jicana. I asked John and he said 'Of course!' It was only seen one day, but got him thinking. We started west ostensibly to redo some of the LA tour's areas but kept heading west without stopping. We managed to get to Kingsville that night.

The next morning we were at the festival headquarters about 9:30. They told us to come back at 12 for walk-in registration. Off we went towards Atacosa on Highway 100. As we approached Old Port Isabel Road I suggested we check it out. Some may remember that we went on it earlier in the year. John had gone on it earlier still. It was a REALLY rutted road and no falcons! This time it had been freshly scraped! Easy as pie! In fact, John was going a bit too fast and I saw the Aplomado Falcon take off from a fence post right next to us. We saw it but not well. John could count it. 671! We continued on to Farm Road 541 and back north to Harlingen.

Got back to the festival at 11:45 and the nice ladies started registering us right away. John got all day tours Wednesday, Thursday and Friday that he wanted. I will go on the first one with him and on half day tours after that. John will still have time for a couple of days in Miami if he wants, before he flies to Philadelphia next Tuesday.

We asked some of the volunteers where we could look for Sprague's Pipit. One suggested farm fields north of Harlingen. After lunch, we wandered there awhile. The sun was getting lower. I said I wanted to go back to Old Port Isabel Road. This time we would approach from Farm Road 541 and have the sun at our backs. Another car came behind us. I fussed a bit that we wouldn't be alone, we switched places a few times, the other driver seemed to not see the falcons flying off fences ahead of us. She flushed two that flew back past us and John didn't get pictures. Argh! BUT one flew back and landed right next to her car on the fence. I didn't want to move our car closer, so John got out and crouch-crawled up using her car as a shield. He got pictures of it on the fence and then in flight! Yay!!!

We continued to follow the other car north. She turned around close to the end of the road and headed back toward us. She thought she had to go all the way back to FR 541. I got to tell her that Highway 100 was just ahead. She turned around again and followed us out. Glad I could pay back a bit for the great views.

There were a Peregrine Falcon and a pair of White-Tailed Hawks along the port road too. Plus all the other usual raptors. Nice day! John was delighted that we decided to head towards Texas this morning.