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I've had a pretty good birding year so far, having already seen 251 species in Texas. I've also managed to get some pretty good (by my standards) photos of many species of residents and migrants. However, what I haven't managed to do is to get good photos of migrant warblers and vireos. I have seen a lot of both kinds of birds but it has generally been when the birds were too far away, or the light was too bad, for my camera equipment to cope with. So these are the kind of pictures I've been getting.
Tuesday at the CyFair campus was a good day for birding but terrible for photos. At 7:30 a.m. behind the nature trail I was surrounded by a flock of warblers: three Blackburnians, three Yellows, three Tennessees etc. The birds were fairly close, too. But it was heavily overcast and it was raining, so I didn't get a single sharp picture. Very frustrating! And particularly frustrating because this year's songbird migration will be ending any time now.
I knew Wednesday was going to be better, though. The forecast was for slight northerly winds, almost guaranteeing a fallout of birds at the college. So I charged my camera battery and headed out early to the campus. I was right. There were migrants everywhere. Blackburnian and Yellow Warblers were posing on treetops. Magnolia and Chestnut-sided Warblers were right by the trail, some only feet away from me. And the light couldn't have been better. Everything had finally come together!
Where are the photos? Well, it's impossible to take good photos - or indeed any photos - if you forget to load the battery into your camera. And that's what I had done.
Note: To offset my disappointment at not getting photos on Wednesday, I saw my 250th species of the year: Mourning Warbler.
Another Good Day
The north winds persisted until Thursday and so that was another good day for migrants on the campus. First up were a Baltimore Oriole and an Olive-sided Flycatcher, closely followed by this Blackburnian Warbler.
Red-eyed Vireos and Black-throated Green Warblers have been numerous this spring and Thursday was no exception.
My final sighting was of a Magnolia Warbler that fussed around in the bushes in front of me for several minutes.
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The other day a colleague showed me a Killdeer nest with four eggs near the campus tennis courts. Later I went back to photograph the nest and had a very hard time finding it, even though it is on a stretch of completely open ground and I had made careful mental notes about its location.
When I reached the nest and took a photo, a pair of adult Killdeer appeared from nowhere and stood watching me. One went scuttling away along the tennis court fence. I didn't move and so the other Killdeer decided to distract me. It started spreading its tail and squawking in apparent distress. "Look at me. I'm injured. You could catch me easily."
It hobbled away. "Oh, look. One of my wings is broken."
I followed. "Oh, no. Now my other wing is broken."
"Now I'm exhausted and totally defenceless."
Once I was a safe distance from the nest, the bird miraculously recovered from its injuries and flew off, happy in the knowledge that it had fooled a dangerous predator.
I'll keep an eye on the nest until the eggs hatch - but I'll do so from a distance so as not to stress the parents any further.
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Another young bird turned up in our yards yesterday: a juvenile Northern Mockingbird. You can tell it's a juvenile by the spots on its breast, and by the yellow around its mouth.
I thought the juvenile was alone but then I noticed a parent was fussing around on a fence just a few yards away.
A little later, a male Northern Cardinal brought one of its offspring to our feeders. Unfortunately, I missed getting a shot of the juvenile.
As the light was fading, we heard an odd chirping from our back fence. I looked out and saw the noise was coming from a young Carolina Wren.
The parents have been escorting this young Wren around our yards for several weeks now, never letting it out of their sight. However, this time the juvenile was clearly on its own and not happy about it. Even though it chirped loudly for some minutes, its parents never appeared. So it looks like they may have decided it's time for this youngster to leave home.
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The final part of our weekend near the coast was a visit to the rookery at High Island.
On our drive from Winnie to Hgh Island we came across an unusual piece of roadkill - an alligator. Even the Turkey Vultures are going to find that difficult to clean up!
It was a little early to see a lot of chicks at the rookery but several Great Egret nests had young in them.
Other Great Egrets were still collecting nesting materials.
None of the Snowy Egrets we saw were as far along with raising families as their larger relatives.
Mixed in with the Egrets were at least three Tricolored Herons.
This one seemed to be awed by the Snowy Egrets' plumage.
A couple of Little Blue Herons were also present but were hunkered down in the foliage.
As always, the biggest crowd-pleasers were Roseate Spoonbills. One pair mated while we were there.
Many more were busy forgaging, or bickering over nesting sites and materials, or just flying around.
Dee and I will have to return to High Island in a few weeks' time, when the Spoonbills and most of the other birds will have nests full of chicks. It's a sight we look forward to every year!
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The marshy areas of the pond were fairly quiet but we did get distant views of three Whimbrels and a couple of Wilson's Phalaropes (below).
We were hoping for Purple Gallinule and Clapper/King Rail but the only rail that we saw was a Common Gallinule (formerly "Common Moorhen").
Just after passing the visitor center on our way out of the refuge, we stopped to look at a Common Nighthawk resting on a tree branch.
Then we had to stop again to admire Dickcissels that were singing their hearts out.
Then another stop, this time to watch a couple of Scissor-tailed Flycatchers chasing each other by the roadside.
The fields along FM1985 had large numbers of Cattle Egrets.
Some flooded field also had Whimbrels (below), Ruddy Turnstones (below), Hudsonian Godwits, Black-bellied Plovers, Buff-breasted Sandpipers, Least Sandpipers and White-rumped Sandpipers.
So I had made the trip partly to add to my year's list of warblers but had instead increased it mainly with shoprebirds. Birding certainly is unpredictable!
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.We headed to Winnie on Saturday morning, hoping to see some more migrant warblers at High Island. On the way we stopped in for 45 minutes at Anahuac NWR. The main reason was that I love Least Bitterns and I'd heard several had recently been spotted around Shoveler Pond.
The entrance road was fairly quiet: a Red-tailed Hawk, a couple of Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, a solitary Eastern Kingbird, a couple of Tree Swallows and a few Red-winged Blackbirds.
The old visitor center building was busy with its usual nesting Barn Swallows.
We drove slowly around the pond, stopping for a while so that Dee could walk the boardwalk. Except for a brief glimpse of an Orchard Oriole, the only birds we saw were Black-necked Stilts (below), Lesser Yellowlegs and Great-tailed Grackles (below).
As this visit had been very disappointing, we decided to visit the refuge again the following morning, and this time to allow ourselves more time for birding on foot.
Our first stop was at the Willows, where a Red-winged Blackbird was singing.
As I was photographing the Blackbird, a bird flew quickly past overhead. A Least Bittern! Perhaps we were going to be luckier today.
We parked in the first pullover area at Shoveler Pond and I got out to check out the roadside water channel while Dee stayed in the car. Almost at once I spotted another Least Bittern just feet away from me. Unfortunately, by the time I had raised my camera, the bird had moved to hide in the reeds on the other side of the channel.
Back at the car, Dee told me she had seen two Least Bitterns in my absence.
We drove on and parked in the next pullover area - right next to where another Least Bittern was prowling through the grasses. This time we both had excellent views of the bird.
As we drove off, another Bittern flew up and then disappeared into the reeds. That was our sixth Least Bittern in about 20 minutes! Those were the last Bitterns we saw but the rest of the drive around the pond was anything but boring.
A pair of Eastern Kingbirds perched on a tree stump right beside the road. They clearly had nesting on their minds.
Then two Orchard Orioles popped up on the other side of the road.
The Orioles were followed by great views of another Eastern Kingbird.
A male Brown-headed Cowbird perched equally nearby.
By now we had driven only halfway around the Shoveler Pond loop and yet we had seen many more birds than in our whole visit the previous day. Would we see any interesting birds as we drove the rest of the loop?
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