Last Stand in Texas

With three days to go in the ABA Area Big Year competition, I was still in fourth place, and still six birds behind Gino Ellison who was still picking up species in Arizona and California. Nonetheless I would try to maximize my species number, and photograph species that I had not yet photographed.

There were four vagrants on winter territories in the lower Rio Grande Valley that I needed to see for my year list: Gray-collared Becard in Brownsville, Crimson-collared Grosbeak in Weslaco, Bare-throated Tiger-Heron and Mottled Owl at Santa Margarita Ranch near Roma, Texas.

My friend EJ Raynor was already in Brownsville when I arrived in San Antonio close to 1 AM on Friday, December 29, 2023. I figured I would rent a car at the airport, find a cheap hotel, then drive four hours to Weslaco for the grosbeak and meet EJ in Brownsville at the end of the day. The following evening we had reserved a guided hike at Santa Margarita Ranch in hopes of hearing nocturnal species, including a resident Mottled Owl and also a Bare-throated Tiger-Heron.

This plan had some kinks. First, the car rental center was closed until 6 AM. I tried reserving a car online but payments did not go through. I slept a bit on the hard floor of the Rental Center. Second by 6:15 AM, I figured out there were no cars available (after all, it was the busiest travel week of the year). Third, just one greyhound bus was heading south this morning from San Antonio departing at 6:30 AM. Fourth, the taxi I found arrived at the bus station at 6:33 AM. Too late. The bus had already departed.

So there I was, stranded at the downtown bus depot. I was also losing valuable time. Maybe I could hook up with a local birder or birding group that also was headed to the valley. I reached out to a few birding friends in the San Antonio area. Laura Keene was the first to respond. Miraculously, she offered to lend me a car. Wow. She saved the day. By 9 AM I was on the road heading south.

I arrived at Frontera Audubon Society in Weslaco at 2 PM. The grove here is dense and full of birds, many of which visit a network of feeding stations and watering holes. EJ had found the Gray-collared Becard in Brownsville after four hours of searching earlier in the day and he met me to help find the Crimson-collared Grosbeak. But the Grosbeak wasn’t interested in being found. After an hour of searching EJ returned to Resaca de La Palma State Park in Brownsville to search for another overwintering vagrant there, Roadside Hawk. I stayed on at Frontera until it closed at 4 PM. I was rewarded with a cooperative Golden-crowned Warbler which was almost too close for photography. Most of my photos were out of focus but one came out pretty well, certainly an improvement over the blur of yellow and gray I obtained November 3, 2023 in Harlingen, TX.

I headed to Brownsville hoping to meet EJ at Resaca de La Palma State Park. Light was fading fast by the time I reached the state park; dusk had settled in. The place was still crawling with birders. With the fading daylight, the bird activity had died down. A couple of Great Horned Owl were hooting. EJ had gotten great looks at the Roadside Hawk and had moved on to view parrots roosting at Oliveira Park in Brownsville. I met him there after the parrot activity subsided. He was with Fort Collins birders Paul and Dilka. We had dinner nearby. I promised to meet Paul and Dilka the next morning at Resaca de La Palma to look for the Gray-collared Becard.

On Saturday morning, I joined the throng of birders looking for the Texas’ first state record Gray-collared Becard. This bird, from Southeast Mexico, was originally found by my friend Brandon Nooner while he was looking for other reported rarities (Roadside Hawk, Blue Bunting, Tropical Parula), on November 5, 2023, a fine example of the Patagonia Picnic Table Effect in action.

I had only been there twenty minutes, when I saw birders begin to run towards a small crowd in the visitor center parking lot. Sure enough, they were on the Gray-collared Becard (USA and Territories Biggest Year-Bird number 880). I began to search for other rarities with Paul and Dilka, but EJ kept me on track. “We should go to Frontera now. You may need extra time to find the grosbeak.”

EJ arrived first and quickly spotted the grosbeak in a shrub with red berries where it frequently forages in the mornings. But it flew off into the thicket before anyone else could see it. I joined the search party.

After about 30 minutes walking the maze of trails without luck. I crossed to the other side of the thicket and sat down at one of the feeding stations. I struck up a relaxed conversation with an older man who was also taking a break on the bench. While conversing I noticed a dark tanager-sized bird perched in a shrub about 30 feet from us. I exclaimed “that’s the grosbeak!” It was a dark olive-green with a black head, bill and throat, a female Crimson-collared Grosbeak (881), a resident of tropical forest in northeast Mexico.

Next, EJ and I visited the National Butterfly Center ($10 entry for non-members) in Mission, TX. A friendly birder pointed out an Eastern Screech Owl in a nest hole. We also saw the resident Audubon’s Oriole (rare) and it’s hybrid offspring (with Altamira Oriole).

After checking into our hotel at Rio Grande City, we visited Roma Bluffs, which offers a birds eye view of the Rio Grande River between the U.S. town of Roma and the Mexican town of Ciudad Miguel Alemán. The sun was setting and I was watching for Red-billed Pigeon flying to roost. One flew by heading towards Mexico. I tried to photo document it but my Nikon P950 was not up to the task.

Now for the big event. We were signed up for a guided nocturnal field trip to Santa Margarita Ranch later that evening. At 7:30 PM, 25 customers (paying $75 each) assembled along the border wall. From there, we carpooled to another spot along the wall where there was a huge open gate in the wall. Our guides (Zach Johnson and Ryan Rodriguez) escorted us along a two track ranch road that parallels the river. We heard spontaneously calling Eastern Screech-owl and Great Horned Owl. Bare-throated Tiger-Heron (882), a Mexican vagrant that has taken up residence at the ranch responded to an imitation vocalized by Ryan who has amazing talents despite his young age of just sixteen years old. At 11 PM, the resident Mottled Owl, another vagrant from northeastern Mexico had not yet been detected. Zach stopped the group one last time to listen. He played a tape for Long-eared Owl and Tawny-collared Nightar “on spec”. He did not play the tape for Mottled Owl because this evening’s tour was stipulated as “no tapes” for the Mottled Owl. I nodded off to sleep during the quiet moment of listening and did not hear what Zach later described as a partial song of a distant Mottled Owl. Several customers however were more alert than me and did hear it. Kudos to them.

There was a moment of excitement a few minutes later. Ryan, who was at the rear of the group, saw a mid-sized owl fly into a small tree along the two-track. It flushed a noisy Plain Chachalaca that was roosting in the tree. At that moment, about six different Eastern Screech-owls called loudly, in excitement. Alas, the offending owl never did reveal itself. Later I listened to my audio recordings for Eastern Screech Owl and Bare-throated Tiger- Heron. The screech owls are a unique subspecies from South Texas known as McCall’s Owl. It may one day get split off as a full species. Indeed it’s calls   sound slightly different than the owl in my back yard in Colorado. I was surprised to hear a couple of different owl sounds in the background of my recordings. One was a single bark that sounded like the first note of the song given by Mottled Owl. I sent it off to my brother, Zach Johnson and Andrew Spencer, a sound technician for the Macaulay Library of Bird Sounds. All agreed with my assessment. It’s risky to hang your hat on one distant bark but out of desperation I decided to count Mottled Owl for my Biggest Year (883).  Fortunately I noticed that the sonagram I recorded was a strong match to the final note in a typical series of barks that comprise the typical song of Mottled Owl. Another owl call in the background of my tiger-heron recording was a brief mourning hoot. To me it sounded like a single hoot of Long-eared Owl or possibly even Stygian Owl, another potential stray from northeast Mexico. Again my team of sound experts agreed with me, but which owl was it? That one I decided to leave in the checklist as owl species.   

One of my goals of this final visit to Texas was to photograph species that I had not yet documented, such as Blue Bunting, Morelet’s Seedeater and Red-billed Pigeon. So on the morning of Sunday, December 31, while I was still packing up, EJ called me. He had gotten an early start at Salineño Wildlife Preserve and had a perched Red-billed Pigeon. And he had seen a Morelet’s Seedeater. Of course, these birds had moved on by the time I arrived, but it’s a great birding spot anyway. I ended up spending the entire morning there. Highlights were Green Kingfisher, Ringed Kingfisher, Zone-tailed Hawk, and Morelet’s Seedeater (no photo unfortunately). While I was hiking around along the river, I misplaced my cell phone. Retracing my steps I could not find it. So I told my story to Bob Bowman and Lois Hughes, two white-haired volunteers from Maine and Iowa, respectively. They offered to help me find the cellphone and with their assistance, calling my phone from various points along my route, we found it! After that fiasco, I sat with them by the feeding station for a while. I was tired. It had been a long day, a long year. Bob said to me, “are you really going to try to drive to San Antonio today?” The prospect of driving four hours was daunting. “I reckon not” one of us said.

By now it was 2:30 PM. Laura Keene had sent me a Facebook post of a possible Lesser Yellow-headed Vulture in La Feria, a couple hours away. I remembered a lovely birding spot I had found earlier in the year called La Feria Nature Center. I called EJ who had headed to South Padre Island hours earlier. He agreed to meet me there. We both arrived at dusk, too late to find any vultures. It was time to end my quest and go home.

In my next blog post, I will present corrections to my list numbers and reflect on my experience this past year.