More Birding Estero Llano

As luck would have it, the Saturday field trip I was helping to lead went to Estero Llano Grande again. That's fine with me. I'd go there every day and be perfectly happy.

Who wouldn't be, with Harris' hawks perched overhead and rasping? This is North America's only social hawk. They hunt cooperatively, winged wolves; one of them driving the prey out into the open and another one or two snatching the hapless thing. So when you see one Harris' hawk, you often see a couple more.

Dawn clouds scudded in an already quickening breeze.

We had a whole charter busload of birders and Estero Llano did not disappoint. I was honored to co-lead with Dave Irons, Shawneen Finnegan and George Armistead. I love these people who love birds. Here's handsome George, pointing stuff out. His ornithologist/librarian/bibliophile father Harry reviewed The Bluebird Effect for Library Journal. Was mostly kind. George, Bill, Jeff Gordon and I worked together on Identify Yourself, as well. What fun to be in the field! The Rio Grande Valley Festival was a homecoming.

Estero Llano is a good place for birds and birders. You may recognize this name (Benton Basham) as an influential early member of the American Birding Association and holder of a North American Big Year listing record of 710 species for quite some time. He's an anesthesiologist who also catalogues butterflies (the logical next step when you run out of birds). His US life list hovers around 868 species. You'd kind of have to have a good day job to do that.

Nearby, a curve-billed thrasher took the sun in a brushpile.

A Teleos longtail, one of the tropical longtail skippers Basham probably sees every day.

Feeders at Estero Llano attract many birds, like this great kiskadee, whose lusty EAT your BEANS call brightens the already sunny days.

Sigh. My best photo of a green jay. I'd forgotten how electric, how elusive they can be. Flashes of neon, raspy calls, then they move on. Makes me love my comparatively phlegmatic but no less flashy blue jays all the more.

Now this is another thing we don't have: green kingfishers. Ohh beautiful bird.

Caught a fish, she did (you can tell it's a girl by her rusty bra).

And swallered it down.

 There's one of those fabulous great kiskadees again. That's a flycatcher what am a flycatcher. Doubt he bothers with flies, probably more into the dragonfly/grasshopper/katydid thing with a bill like that.

Devilishly difficult to photograph a ladder-backed woodpecker, which is the ecological equivalent of the downy in South Texas. They're always on the other side of the limb, tapping away.

A lovely flight of long-billed curlews goes over, reminding me yet again that I'm not in Ohio.

and a mottled duck drops into the lagoon.

The unlikely star of the show was a northern beardless tyrannulet, a tropical flycatcher much sought after in South Texas. Dave Irons knew just where he'd be, trilling dryly. I remembered beardless tyrannulets from the Brasilian Amazon, remembered their call. Amazing, to have that memory sift up through my much-used gray matter.

Liam's paraque was in exactly the same spot she was two days ago, but this time she was looking at us with eyes in the back of her head. I've got those too. Ask Liam. (He really thought I did have them for the longest time; he used to sort through my hair to find them. How else could I know what he was doing behind my back?)

I love this shot! The bird is facing away. I'm still trying to figure out why the paraque would roost just inches off the trail and put up with being awakened dozens of times each day by gawking birders. What is it about that exact spot that makes it worthwhile for the bird to stay there? File under Things I'll Never Understand But am Thankful For.

I didn't expect to come away from a bird festival in Texas with a vision straight out of the wild blue sky of North Dakota. White pelicans wheel over Estero Llano, and I found myself wondering if I'd look up smiling next June during our Prairie Ramble and draw in my breath at the same bird circling near Chase Lake.

You never know who you'll run into at a birding festival.

Estero Lllano Grande: A Feast for the Eyes

 Blue-winged teal, drake in flight. Ahhhhh. That's such a singular blue on those lesser wing coverts. And I always forget that they have a brilliant green speculum, so taken with their shoulders am I. Frozen in flight by my Canon 7D, with its 70-300 IS L series lens. The rig of my dreams.

I was already getting tired of winter. Ohio has turned almost gray, with heavy rains and winds ripping the leaves off the trees. So it was a delight to come down to south Texas for the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival, to bake our blanched bodies in warm sun, to feel the tropical breeze, which rapidly became a warm tropical gale.

Our first stop was Estero Llano Grande. It was Liam's birthday, and we wanted to spend the whole day together doing something we like to do. Birding. Butterflying. Paraqueing.

A Teleus longtail on Eupatorium (closely related to my lovely mistflower).

A clouded skipper. I think. Texas butterflies are a tad tricky for me. Mexican stuff, tropical stuff, stuff I never see. Makes it even more fun.

Bougainvillea. I miss my bougainvilleas. Had them in the greenhouse for years. They finally got too ungainly and sparse. Maybe this year. If we ever get the greenhouse done...we're looking at Saturday for our next series of roadblocks and heartbreaks. Or maybe even completion. This project has made a hardened pessimist of me.

White peacocks were everywhere.

Nothing subtle about this one--the  guava skipper, an uncommon to rare (even in So. TX) tropical species that's dependent on plantings of guava for egglaying and caterpillar rearing. Wow. Look at that helmet.

The orange headlights are a nice touch, as are the blue striations on thorax and inner forewing.

It was a difficult bug to photograph, because it liked to hang upside down. I like this one. It looks like a guy in a butterfly suit.

We smiled at the clambering antics of plain chachalacas, the U.S.'s only member of the cracid family. It's a guan. I still can't believe we have a native guan. How cool.

Though they bear a superficial resemblance to grouse, turkeys and chickens, they aren't galliformes. They're something much more primitive, stranger. Perhaps a very early (as in Cretaceous) proto-galliform.

When I saw a horned guan atop Volcan Atitlan, I knew I had seen something primitive, something elemental, something irreplaceable.
Noisy as they are, chachas are beloved by Texans.

Om nom on the orange.

A Cooper's hawk wished for an unwary chachalaca, green jay or dove.

One of my very favorite photos of the trip: a mottled duck in flight. Egad, look at that speculum. Note that it lacks the conspicuous white trailing edge to the speculum that mallards show. Though it superficially resembles a black duck or female mallard, the mottled duck is a separate species, Anas fulvigula, distinguished by a highly contrasting pale head and neck. Sexes are alike. This bird doesn't migrate; it's a subtropical resident in Florida and Texas. And boy, is it beautiful in flight.

I guess the highlight of the day, and the trip, was the moment that Bill jokingly offered the kids $50 to spot a paraque (easier said than done). This tropical nightjar is extremely well-camouflaged on the forest floor, where it rests all day after a night of moth catching. Within seconds, Liam pointed at his feet. "There's one." And within five minutes, Phoebe had one located in the woods. Holy cow. Harnessing the power of kid eyes. We were very, very proud of our youngun's. No biggie, right Liam?

Phoebe has been genuinely bitten by the birding mosquito, and if his dedication to cross-country (another of Phoebe's passions) is any indication, Liam will likely follow suit. She's all ate up about birding. Shh. Don't tell her how thrilled we are.

Liam clocks out now and then. Every brand-new 13 year old gets to clock out when he needs to. Especially on his birfday.

Phoebe's paraque.

And Liam's. We'd never have seen them but for the kids.

All hail Estero Llano Grande. What a place, what a beautiful place it is. It was so wonderful to be together as a family on this special day. Wearing shorts and feeling the warm wind lift the hairs on our arms. Mmm.