Birding TX

Tue, January 17, 2012, 9:00 am
Cape Velero Drive

Trip Report

This Snowy Owl was most cooperative.

Tuesday the 17th of January Emry, my wife, and Elyse, my daughter decided to have a mother and daughter outing. That left Tom and I to find something to do. Yes we went birding. And we dubbed this outing "Tommy Tuesday". All we did was walk out the front door and birded around the condo.

We started in the front yard with Savannah Sparrows and about three hours later we accumilated 57 different birds. Three of those were life birds for myself, Stilt Sandpiper, Sedge Wren, and Green-tailed Towhee. We got the Sedge Wren and Green-tailed Towhee along an edge area between scrub brush and a marsh. We named the area "Sedge Edge". The Sedge Wren was very accommidating. It perched on grass and sedge about two foot off the ground within 25 ft of us for about 4 minutes. That gave time to make a positive ID. The Green-tailed Towhee was even more accommidating. It was in a scrub bush scolding us on our first pass and reminded us it was still there on our return pass. The Stilt Sandpiper was on a mud flat in a mixed flock of about 100 shore birds. The flock was made up mostly of Short-billed Dowitchers and Dunlin, and with a few Stilt Sandpipers mixed in. It was very helpful having similar species in the same flock for comparison only 50 ft in front of us. We finished up the outing in the front yard with the same Savannah Sparrows.

Tom Glover