High Island Rookery

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The rookery in Smith Oaks at High Island is always worth a visit during nesting season and we weren't disappointed when we stopped by there on Saturday.

As usual, visitors were captivated by the appearance and antics of the Roseate Spoonbills.

A few Spoonbills were grooming or sitting quietly on nests.

Others were still in the process of building nests.

Now and then two of the birds would get involved in a tussle that involved a lot of noisy fencing with their bills.

There were many Snowy Egrets, resplendent in full breeding plumage. It was easy to understand how they were almost exterminated 100 years ago to provide feathers for women's hats.

Most of the Snowy Egrets seemed to be flying and wandering around rather aimlessly but a few were clearly in breeding pairs.

For most visitors the stars of the show were the Great Egrets.

A few pairs were indulging in bonding behaviors.

While their plumage was generally not as spectacular as that of their Snowy cousins, several of them had visible young in their nests. So onlookers oohed and aahed as Great Egret parents fed their chicks, and as siblings competed for food.

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A Birdwatcher's Dream - and Nightmare

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On Saturday we started our visit to High Island with a walk to the Smith Oaks rookery. (I'll report on that in a later blog.) We followed up with a picnic lunch and a little birding in Smith Oaks.

The trees around the picnic area were busy with Eastern Wood-Pewee, a late Red-breasted Nuthatch and several warblers - American Redstart, Tennessee, Chestnut-sided, Blackburnian, Black-throated Green and Magnolia.

Blackburnian Warbler

Black-throated Green Warbler

I took a brief walk through the woods, hoping for Yellow-billed Cuckoo. Everyone I met had seen several but I missed them all. However, I did get two looks at two birds of a much less common species, the Black-billed Cuckoo, which was a life bird for me.  

After lunch Dee and I spent an hour at Boy Scout Woods, where there was plenty to look at. Within a few minutes we had seen Swainson's Thrush, Gray Catbirds, a late American Goldfinch in breeding plumage, Indigo and Painted Buntings, Philadelphia and Red-eyed Vireos, and Ovenbird. Later arrivals were Scarlet Tanager, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Hooded Warbler and American Redstart. A quick visit to the Prothonotary Pond produced my first Northern Waterthrush of the year.

The next morning I was at Smith Oaks early and was greeted by few birders but a lot of birds. One small area had 8 warbler species, mainly close enough to watch without binoculars. I rushed back to the motel, got Dee and brought her back to enjoy the scene.

For the next 90 minutes we hardly moved, because we were surrounded by warblers and vireos (plus a Western Kingbird and an Eastern Wood-Pewee). Most of the birds came within 10 feet of where we and other birders were standing. It really was a birdwatcher's and bird photographer's dream!

Unfortunately, for this bird photographer it immediately turned into a nightmare when my camera stopped working. At first it kept refusing to focus. Then, when it did focus, it decided to grossly over-exposure the photos. It was unbelievably frustrating! When I got home, I found I was able to rescue only a handful of photos, and even those don't do justice to the birds we saw. Oh, well, at least we got to see the birds up close! 

Black-and-White Warbler

Black-throated Green Warbler
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Northern Parula
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Tennessee Warbler

Chestnut-sided Warbler
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Chestnut-sided Warbler
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Bay-breasted Warbler
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Blackburnian Warbler

Blackburnian Warbler

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Sunday Shots

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Meanwhile, Back in Our Yards

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For the past week I've spent hardly any time in our yards. This is partly because I've been out looking for spring migrants and partly because the winter residents have now left our yards. My last sighting of Red-breasted Nuthatches was on April 24. Brown-headed Nuthatches are still visiting, which makes me think they may have become permanent residents.

When I have had time to look, I've seen only our normal residents, including the pair of Carolina Wrens that keep bringing their young to check out our feeders. American Robins, Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals and Carolina Chickadees have all been regular visitors also.

As always, some of the most frequent visitors have been White-winged Doves. This one seemed to be testing the temperature of the water in our birdbath with its tail.

The temperature must have been just right because the bird proceeded to take a leisurely bath.

Every so often all of our birds disappear, when a Cooper's Hawk flies through our yards. It's presumably the same hawk that has been hanging out on our block for most of the winter.

This Weekend
As another cold front is passing through, we've decided to spent the weekend at High Island. While the odds are very low of any fallout lasting to Saturday, we're hoping that we might see a good number of migrants. If migrants don't appear, we should still have fun watching the nesting birds in the Smith Oaks rookery and making another visit to Anahuac NWR.
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Migration at Work

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After several quiet weeks for migrants on the CyFair campus, I thought that the weekend's rain might have brought in some new birds. So I spent an hour around the college nature trail on Sunday morning.

After a brief glimpse of a Rose-breasted Grosbeak, I came across a tree that had half-a-dozen Baltimore Orioles, the adult males looking particularly striking with their orange breasts and black heads.  

The Orioles were to stay around for several days, as was the case with some Ruby-throated Hummingbirds that also appeared on Sunday.

The only warbler I saw was a Tennessee.

Monday and Tuesday were better days for warblers. A male Blackburnian Warbler and a Common Yellowthroat appeared for a while but, of course, it was when I didn't have a camera with me. I was better prepared when a Black-throated Green Warbler flitted through the trees. 

Tuesday brought great views of a Bay-breasted Warbler, which seemed totally unaware of my presence.

I missed out on getting photos of a Black-and-white Warbler, an Orchard Oriole, several Indigo Buntings and a Red-eyed Vireo but I managed to get a shot of my first Warbling Vireo of 2013.

I also had mixed results with flycatchers. While I missed photos of a small flock of Scissor-tailed Flycatchers and a pair of Western Kingbirds, I was a little luckier with an Eastern Wood-Pewee.



A Wood Thrush (below) was a nice surprise, as too was a brief look at a Swainson's Thrush, a new bird for the college list. 

So the first three days of this week produced more migrants than the previous three weeks combined. Now I'm hoping that the cold front forecast for tomorrow will bring in at least a few more visitors.
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