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The Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival
November 9-13, 2005
by Miriam Lacher
We arrived at Harlingen just in time to register at
the convention center on the afternoon before the festival began,
amidst a display of RGVBF caps, t-shirts, and patches featuring
the festival's emblem, the great kiskadee flycatcher, a gloriously
bright yellow bird common in the area whose name is onomatopoeic
with its loud cry. The convention center was filled with displays
by dealers in avian art, t-shirts with nature themes, optical equipment,
and nature centers. One education center displayed its birds (a
kestrel and a great horned own, with wing injuries that made them
incapable of flight), as well as a Burmese python, very large millipede,
young alligator, and legless lizard, inviting rapt children to touch
the reptiles. The entire event was sponsored by the local chamber
of commerce, and businesses were gracious and interested. Maury
and I stayed at a Marriott Courtyard, one of the sponsors of the
event, which put itself out for festival attendees by providing
its continental breakfast at 4 AM also boxed lunches, both complimentary,
as well as supplying extra towels. It was bright, sunny, and humid
on all of the trips, with daily high temperatures around 90, and
some welcome breezes. We were warned to spray both directly on ankles
and pant legs covering ankles to deter chiggers (even so, this was
insufficient, so that emollients suggested by local pharmacists
were useful). On the up-side of the buggish world, there were a
great many butterflies, and butterfly gardens had fluttering haloes
of them. Some of the birders and leaders also had expertise in identifying
these, often with regal names.
The Texas Rio Grande Valley funnels birds from the American flyways
and has a great variety of species. Some of our Northeastern birds
winter or are present year-round there. Of these, we saw house sparrows,
rock pigeons, mourning doves, phoebes, pied-billed grebes, starlings,
black and turkey vultures, double-crested cormorant, mallard, blue-
and green-winged teal, northern harrier, gadwall, American widgeon,
northern pintail, ring-necked duck, lesser scaup, ruddy duck, redhead,
American coot, greater and lesser yellowlegs, killdeeer, Wilson's
snipe, spotted sandpiper, red-tailed hawk, Cooper's hawk, northern
harrier, peregrine falcon, kestrel, sharp-shinned hawk, osprey,
mourning dove, yellow-bellied sapsucker; tree, barn, and northern
rough-winged swallows; house wren, Carolina wren, blue-gray gnatcatcher,
ruby- and golden-crowned kingbird, common yellowthroat, myrtle warbler,
black and white warbler, savannah sparrow, northern cardinal, red-winged
blackboard (sufficiently unusual there that the leaders pointed
them out), catbird, northern mockingbird (the Texas state bird),
belted kingfisher, great blue heron, black-crowned night heron,
and indigo bunting (heard only), as well as locals and visitors
from Mexico and South America. We had several simultaneous inviting
walks from which to choose. Buses boarded for trips at 5:30 AM and
departed at 6, before dawn, so that the 1-hour difference in time
zone was appreciated. Most trips returned around noon. Each trip
had 4-5 expert leaders. As we drove through city streets on the
return trips, we encountered great-tailed grackles (large grackles
that imitate sounds, of which they seem to favor car alarms) and
bronzed cowbirds, flocking to roost for the night.
Our first walk, on November 9th, was at the Santa Ana National
Wildlife Refuge, a subtropical thorn forest with some ponds, adjacent
to the Rio Grande. The stretch of Rio Grande we saw was diminished,
little more than a creek. Along the path by the river grow Spanish
moss-draped live oak, hackberry, and Texas ebony. The luckiest sighting
on that trip was the hook-billed kite hunting over the ponds. Besides
the birds familiar to us in New York, we saw: least grebe, great
egret, white-faced ibis, mottled duck, northern shoveler, and black-necked
stilt in the ponds; Harris's hawk peering down at us from a treetop;
white tipped- and white-winged doves, golden-fronted and ladder-backed
woodpeckers, great kiskadee, Couch's kingbird, colorful green jays
(reliably at feeders); black-crested titmouse, orange warbler, black-throated
gray warbler, Lincoln's sparrow, and Altamira oriole.
Our second walk, on November 10th, was at the King Ranch, which
offers birding tours in areas not used for crops (sorghum and cotton),
cattle, or natural gas. We traveled on dirt roads along grass and
scrub land with mesquite, interrupted by occasional groves of trees.
In one of these, we were sufficiently lucky to locate a ferruginous
pygmy owl. Other non-northeastern birds included: Harris's hawk,
white-tailed hawk, crested caracara (a falcon in a sort of vulture
niche), golden-fronted and ladder-backed woodpecker, Couch's kingbird,
white-eyed vireo, Bewick's wren, black-crested titmouse, long-billed
thrasher, Sprague's pipit (way overhead), orange-crowned warbler,
and pyrrhuloxia.
Our third walk, on November 11th, was to the Bentsen-Rio Grande
State Park in McAllen, with its artificial pond, woodlands, flood
plain forests and brush. We first stopped at a resaca (oxbow) in
the river en route, in which we saw anhinga, snowy and great egret,
Muscovy duck, and - the mammal of the day -- nutria, a sort of southern
version of the muskrat. At the park, we saw clay-colored robins
on the telephone lines near the pond, and anhinga, snowy and great
egret within it, two gray screech owls at different points in the
park; and also greater white-fronted goose, gray hawk, Harris's
hawk, chachalaca (imagine a cross between a wild turkey and a road
runner), white-winged dove, golden-fronted and ladder-backed woodpeckers,
loggerhead shrike, great kiskadee, vermillion flycatcher, northern
beardless tyrannulet and verdin (the last two heard only), and American
pipit. Late that afternoon, we also rode to a strip mall in the
next town, San Benito, to watch green parakeets settle in for the
night in the Sabal palms behind it. Just afterwards, as dusk fell,
back in Harlingen, we stood by the City Lake across the street from
the Harlingen Public Library to check for red-crowned parrot. We
didn't see any of these, but we did see tropical kingbird, as well
as hearing them; the call is necessary to differentiate between
them and Couch's kingbird. In the evening, we had a fine hors d'oeuvre
buffet laid out for the festival-goers by the local culinary school.
On our next day, November 12th, we went on a pontoon boat along
the Rio Grande. Along the river, we saw white pelican, tricolored
heron, mottled duck, Harris's hawk, spotted sandpiper, ringed kingfisher,
green kingfisher and American pipit, great kiskadee, black phoebe,
and golden-fronted and ladder-backed woodpecker. We went from there
to Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen, which includes one of the larger
remaining adobe-built residences in Texas, now being transformed
into a museum and urban nature center to be opened to the public
next March. We saw Carolina chickadees, and among their several
hummingbird feeders, we got to see buff-bellied hummingbirds. In
the evening, Tim Gallagher gave the keynote address, on the ivory-billed
woodpecker, written up in his recent book.
Our next day, November 13th, we took the trip to Brownsville, to
the Sabal Palm Grove Audubon Sanctuary. Again, there were ponds,
this time with an observation tower. We were sufficiently fortunate
to find groove-billed ani (most winter further south), and also
saw least grebe, brown pelican, anhinga, greater white-fronted goose,
Muscovy duck, mottled duck, spotted sandpiper, chachalaca, Harris's
hawk, ringed kingfisher, golden-fronted woodpecker, tropical kingbird,
cave swallow, orange-crowned warbler, yellow warbler, and a flock
of green parakeets overhead. We then went on to Boca Chica. We stopped
at a farm field in which a burrowing owl was stationed at a culvert.
The road ended at a beach on the Gulf of Mexico, where we saw reddish
egret, willet, ruddy turnstone, dunlin, royal tern, Caspian turn,
gull-billed tern, and Forster's tern.
Maury and I stayed for an extra day after the festival, so that
we could go to the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. We
did not find the Aplomado falcon that groups had seen a couple of
days before, but we did see a roadrunner, and when we reached the
flats at the Gulf, we had good views of white-tipped doves, white
and brown pelicans, little blue heron, mottled duck, northern shoveler,
northern pintail, northern harrier, Harris's hawk, kestrel, black-necked
stilt, lesser and greater yellowlegs, long-billed curlew, loggerhead
shrike, great kiskadee, and, later in the day, we stopped at the
mudflats adjacent to the South Padre Island Convention Center, where
we saw reddish egret, tricolor heron, and sora rail among the reeds.
All in all, a most satisfying trip.
Wings
Over Dutchess, February
2006
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