Birding TX

Fri, January 20, 2012, 9:00 am
Corpus Christi and Portland, TX

Trip Report

This Snowy Owl was most cooperative.

Well folks for this day Friday the 20th of January Elyse, Tom, and I birded three locations, and ended the day with a chase.

Our first location was Sunset Lake Park, a Portland, TX city park just north of Corpus Christi. The park is narrow strip of land with the Corpus Christi Bay on one side and a shallow salt lake on the other side. We found 41 species at this stop. The shore and wading birds naturally made up the most of the species. What we found interesting about this location was the varity of birds in mixed flocks foraging on the mud flats of the salt lake. In fact it was one of those occations that you could actually compare the birds side by side. We found Snowy, Semipalmated, and Piping Plovers, and the larger Black-bellied Plover, plus Western and Least Sandpipers, along with Sanderlings, Ruddy Turnstones, Dunlin, and Short-billed Dowitcher. Other larger birds included Black Skimmer, Willet, Marbled Godwit, American Oystercatcher, Black-necked Stilt, and Greater and Lesser Yellow Legs. More common birds were Great Blue and Tricolor Heron, and Snowy and Reddish Egrets.

Next location was Indian Point Park, another Portland city park that adjoins Sunset Lake Park. We found only 16 different birds at this location. Of note was a Stilt Sandpiper hanging out with Black-nicked Stilts. Two birds of note that were not found at this location were Black and Yellow-crowned Night-Herons. In years past I found these two birds roosting side by side in the scrub brush at this spot. And we had one surprise at this location. As we were about to depart I noticed a bird on top of a light pole, we pulled "Carl" the scope out of the trunk, and found of all things a Merlin. That made up for the lack of birds at this stop.

Next we drove to Pollywog Pond, on the north side of Corpus Chirsti just off Interstate 37. Pollywog Pond is part of the sewage treatment system of Corpus Christi. Now as I have mentioned before about the Texas draught taking a toll on the environment, this place proved to have the most fresh-water of any of our birding locations to date. The treated waste water flows into settling ponds. And on these ponds were Gadwall, American Wigeon, Redhead, Ring-necked Duck, Lesser Scaup, Bufflehead, Ruddy Duck, and both Least and Pied-billed Grebes. The most interesting bird we found was a Couch's Kingbird. For the longest time we could not decide if the bird was a Couch's or a Tropical Kingbird. The two look very similar. But we nailed the ID after the bird began to sing.

As I mentioned we ended the day on a chase. Yesterday Thursday while visiting Mr. Jimmy Jackson on his ranch near Beeville, TX he informed Tom about Burrowing Owls located north of Rockport, TX on and off of TX Rt 35. So we took the long way back to the condo, and were rewarded for our efforts. About 21 miles north of Rockport no more than 15 feet off Rt 35 nesting in a broken culvert was our first Burrowing Owl. This little guy was very tolerant of traffic whizzing by at 70 - 80 MPR and of birders taking close up photos. Now the second Burrowing Owl we found about five miles further out in the country, also living in a culvert, was not as tolerant. This bird would not hold still. Most of the photos of this bird were a blurr.

You know today was a good birding day. We got a good schooling on those hard to ID peeps, plus we had a few suprises, a Merlin and a Couch's Kingbird, and we ended the day on an Owl hunt. Yep not a bad day.

Tom Glover