Texas Ornithological Society Spring Meeting - Weslaco 2005

Random Recollections

• Mother and dad came over to our hotel in Weslaco on Thursday morning. After stopping to get supplies at HEB in Weslaco, we headed for Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. This was mother and dad's first full day of birding, and they both seemed to enjoy it. Dad's hearing aids, however, prevented him from easily locating the direction that bird sounds were coming from. Still, he appeared to really enjoy seeing the birds and the area. Mother, on the other hand, seemed to take to the sport right away. I think we may have another birder in the family soon (if not already).
• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge was a truly beautiful place. In researching its history, I learned that it was established as a national wildlife refuge in 1943. It has 2080 acres of varied habitat. They are managing it in such a way to make it mimic the old Río Grande Delta by flooding areas with water from time to time and then letting it dry out to form crescent-shaped oxbow lakes called 'resacas.' This, combined with the naturally arid conditions, provides great diversity of habitat within the refuge.
• The trail that we took was a short 1/2 mile loop. At the far end of the trail was an oxbow lake full of wading and shorebirds. After being there for some time, we noticed that a large diamondback watersnake was perched on some dead branches in the water right in front of us. This snake must have been 6 to 8 feet long and 2 to 4 inches thick. After a long while, a large group of birds of many types started to become agitated. Before long they all congregated together around the snake. Four Black-necked Stilts got right in front of the snake as if they were daring it to catch one of them. The stilts would get very close, and, if the snake moved or they sensed danger they would flare up into the air, in a vertical and somewhat backward motion. I thought that they would have run the other way to begin with, but that is not what they did. More and more birds gathered around, obviously taunting the snake, until finally the snake had had enough. The snake slithered off of the branches into the water and headed to our right. Amazingly, all of the birds followed along behind the snake to make sure that it indeed left the area. We could not believe our eyes that all of these birds would actually chase off that large a snake.
• After spending all morning at Santa Ana, and eating a late lunch at Chili's, we went to Allen Williams' house in Pharr. We spent the rest of the afternoon there wandering through the large backyard which he has reconverted to native landscape. It was shady and cool, had a very interesting mix of beautiful plants, and had a number of colorful and rare birds that we enjoyed viewing. However, by the end of the day, I think mother and dad had had about all of birdwatching they could handle for one day. We then drove to a restaurant called The Blue Onion (after failing to find several other places and battling all of the construction that was taking place on Highway 83) where we had a wonderful meal together. Mother and Dad dropped us off at our hotel and then had a late evening drive back to South Padre Island where they were staying. It made it quite a long birding day for them... just the thing to let them see what birding is all about. ;-) If that didn't scare them off, I guess they might become true birders after all.
• After we returned to our hotel room, we decided that we should pick up our complementary breakfast coupons from the front desk just in case we decided to eat at the restaurant the following morning. When we arrived in the hotel lobby, we noticed that there was a lady standing at the counter talking to the clerk. We couldn't help overhearing that she was having problems since she had arrived for the TOS convention late that evening. She had been delayed by several accidents along her route on the way to the Valley. There was no one from the TOS staff in the lobby to greet her when she arrived and the hotel clerk had not been informed on how to handle late arrivals. We introduced ourselves and she said that her name was Janice Houghton (pronounced Ja-niece How-ton). She said that she had signed up for specific field trips several months ago, but she was not sure if she had been assigned to the trips that she had requested. She also had no information about where to report the next morning or at what time to be there. We made a copy of information from our registration packet which described the information that we had. We discussed various options, and agreed that she could follow us at 6:30 a.m. to the meeting point (our trip left at 7:00 a.m.) or she could try to find the location herself earlier since some of the trips left at 6 a.m. She said that she would call us by 6:30 a.m. the next morning if she decided to follow us. When she called the next morning, it turned out that TOS officials had all of her information available at breakfast at 5:00 a.m., and that she had been assigned to the same fieldtrip that we were taking. We decided to go together and found her to be a delightful companion throughout the convention and even part of the way back home until her route separated from ours.
• Our first field trip was to Santa Ana led by John Odgers and a short woman from up north. Neither one carried a scope; so I carried mine. Met one of Tom Edwards' roommates from Rice University, a contrarian named Dick Massey and wife Barbara. Highlights: nesting Great-horned Owls, a nightjar roosting in a tree, Tropical Parula, Summer Tanager, Indigo Buntings, Common Yellow-throat, Clay-colored Robin heard an Olive Sparrow but couldn't find it. The birds weren't as plentiful as I'd seen them before but then I wasn't going for the rarities of the valley. At one point a little flurry of warblers showed up in some trees, one of which was a Chestnut-sided.
• Ate the lunch we had to prepare before 6 am at Santa Ana. A buff-breasted Humingbird came in to feed at the feeders by the visitor center. Then saw Bronzed Cowbird, and Groove-billed Ani. After lunch we drove around a golf course where John Odgers lived to look for Tropical Kingbird. After several attempts at playing their call, John got one to respond. The kingbirds no doubt had heard this DVD numerous times.
• A trip out to a field to scare up Sprauge's Pipits failed; however we got a decent look at a Grasshopper Sparrow, all beigie orangeish. We had more fun watching the jack rabbits race across the field than actually birding.
• We did supper at the hotel with Janice and sat across from Bill Hughes, Dr. John and June Estes, and Joan Howard. After exchanging the day's sightings, we ate and then went to bed.
• Another early start for Saturday found us going to South Padre Island to meet Brad McKinney, our field trip leader. As expected, Osprey's were sitting on the utility poles. At the SPI Convention Center, we were met by a decapitated Indigo Bunting and a dead Sora. Looked like something the cat got. Around the small island of trees we found a very tired and photogenic Black-winged Red Bird (Scarlet Tanager), Western Tanager, Curve-billed Thrasher, Gray Catbird, Yellow Warbler, Nashville Warbler, and Baltimore Orioles. We tried to turn a Yellow-billed Cuckoo into a Mangrove Cuckoo, but alas, it was only a local.
• On the board walk, the always hidden Marsh and Sedge Wrens hopped up for all to see; Purple Gallinule made an impressive showing, a Marbled Godwit stood among Willets, a group of Oyster Catchers huddled together, and several shorebirds ran around defying us to identify them.
• Then a trip to two lots near Laguna Madre produced beautiful Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Baltimore and Orchard Orioles, Indigo Buntings, Tennessee, Black and White, Nashville Warblers, Green Heron bathing in the corner, Ovenbird, Northern Waterthrush, Yellow-breasted Chat, and one extremely plain, almost unrecognizable American Goldfinch.
• A quick stop to Barbara Kennet's house was just that…quick. Nothing was hopping because she was having a landscaper work in her yard and she hadn't put seed out for the birds. Randy and I stayed to help her put seed out and get a few other things done.
• As we had more time left than we had expected, we drove over to CE and Giny's hotel and 'did' lunch with them at Amberjack's restaurant. Had a great view of the bay and good food, too.
• That evening we listened to Tim Brush present the program on his seven months in Turkey. Largrey was found drooling over the new Swarovski EL binoculars while Randy was visiting with others.
• Before leaving the Valley, we went to Frontera Audubon and looked for the Crimson-collared Grosbeak and Elegant Trogan. We left a reason to come back, no Elegant Trogan. We also found Kentucky, Blue-winged, Tennessee, Yellow-rumped, and Yellow Warblers. Frontera was an absolute jewel although the trails sure were trampled down with the over several thousand world-wide visitors coming for the rarities that had shown up in late 2004.
• Finally tearing ourselves away from the Valley, we headed home with only one last birding stop; the Falfurias rest stop.
• One last excitement on the way home: a motorcade speeding past us in San Antonio. Now who do you suppose was in that convoy of three black suburbans being escorted by police?
• We took one last break at Fredericksburg for a great meal at Mamacitas.