Grasspipering, Winnie Pro Tips, Sea Rim State Park, Sabine Woods

Being true to my nature, I am really dragging out reporting from Texas this spring, but we are getting close to the end. Also, this post somehow seems more relevant now than a couple of months ago, as we are all again experiencing the passage of shorebirds and passerines that are such a big part of what makes us do what we do.

Before BB&B leaves the High Island area entirely, a few more quick notes...grasspipers and Hudsonian Godwits were target species for the trip, and we did quite a bit of driving around in Chambers County (where Anahuac NWR is) before sweet victory. American Golden-Plovers (front bird in the above photo) were fairly common and not difficult to find, but it took a while before we finally connected with Buff-breasted (above) and Upland Sandpipers, which are both marvelous species that I am perpetually starved for here on the west coast. I dig the white wing linings glowing on one of the Buff-breasteds above.

There are a plethora of roads on the coastal plain that could potentially lead you to good shorebirding or grasspipering; we barely scratched the surface. Our Field of Dreams for grasspipers was a very large field with very short grass on farm road 1941, west of TX-124. Flooded fields in a few places had additional Buff-breasted Sandpipers, Ruddy Turnstones (which I don't consider to be ag field birds, but they know better), White-rumped and Baird's Sandpipers, etc.

A few logistical tips for anyone planning on making the trip next spring:

*We stayed at Motel 6 in Winnie. It was relatively cheap and totally fine, aside from the clogged sink that the staff took days to fix. I would stay there again though.

*In Winnie, we ate at Al-T's steakhouse a lot, which you should do as well. We also ate at the Crawfish Box, which was awesome. That was my lifer crawfish meal, and I can't wait to do it again. I also made Dan and Nate eat at Waffle House, because I love Waffle House.

*I looked into Airbnbs before the trip, but the only options in the immediate area were out on the Bolivar Peninsula and they were not cheap, though if you were travelling in a group renting out a beach house would definitely make sense. Any resident of Winnie or High Island who lists their place on Airbnb could potentially rake it in March-May, provided their listing consisted of something nicer than a decaying trailer (which are locally common). 

*As far as we could figure, the best coffee in Winnie (which is not the same as good coffee) is at Brewed Awakening.

*The Market Basket in Winnie has all the groceries you need, aside from liquor.

With the Galveston and Chambers sites wrapped up, let's move on to Jefferson County! Jefferson is the easternmost county on the UTC and is right on the Louisiana border. Sea Rim State Park is one of the hotspots in the area. According to Steve from Kansas City (Hi Steve!), Sea Rim once hosted a willow patch that was an absolute gem of a migrant trap, but was inundated with brackish water from a hurricane several years ago and is no more. The park is still good for a variety of water birds though, including this confiding Solitary Sandpiper.

I'm not saying this is a skulky or wary species, but I have had a hell of a time getting to close to them most places. This bird had no qualms about lingering in crush range.

I think the bird is just expelling some salt out of its nostrils, but this appears to be the equivalent of a Solitary Sandpiper sneeze.

Lesser Yellowlegs are one of the most abundant shorebird migrants on the UTC. This one was still mostly in basic plumage.

Oddly, Greater Yellowlegs were an uncommon bird everywhere we went, which just doesn't compute to me considering the abundance and diversity of shorebirds in the region. Compare the bicolored, recurved and longer bill on this bird with the Lesser Yellowlegs above.

Long-billed Dowitcher. It's not a field mark I use, but supposedly the kink in the bill visible in the first photo is supposed to be a helpful field mark for Short-billed Dowitcher. These days everyone seems to have their own suite of field marks they like to use to ID dowitchers that they apply very liberally...what happened to caution? Has it been thrown to the wind, no longer warranted? At least Short-billed X Long-billed Dowitcher doesn't seem to be a popular identification yet. The increasing (yes, still) tendency of birders to identify birds as bizarre hybrids continues to be disappointing.

Least Bitterns, on the other hand, are never disappointing, even if they prefer to stay hidden in the reeds.

Even Boat-tailed Grackles aren't disappointing if you go long enough without seeing them. This one was doing its best to strike a pose that would eliminate all iridescence and recall a Melodious Blackbird (perhaps the most overdue Mexican bird yet to be found in the states), but with such a boaty tail and unmelodious voice it had no chance.

When Roseate Spoonbills are flying overhead at sunset, all is very briefly right with the world.

Common Nighthawk was a common migrant during our week on the UTC. This one chose to roost on the boardwalk out over the marsh. Like all nightjars, they are extremely novel to see up close.

Sea Rim was nice but not exactly thrilling, though I'm sure it can get really birdy at times. And we didn't even get out to the beach, so who knows what was lounging on the sandy sand? We gave a valiant effort to try and hear a Black Rail, donating blood to mosquitoes at dusk, but none vocalized. We really let Nate down, which haunts me to this day.

The last hotspot BB&B is going to cover from Texas is Sabine Woods. The first afternoon we visited yielded tons of birders (gross), which brought Boy Scout Woods to mind, but more importantly lots and lots of birds, mostly ground-loving and low-in-the-canopy species like this Worm-eating Warbler. Not a fallout, but there were a shitload of migrants. It was an impressive showing - migrants seemed to be everywhere at times - and yet another reminder that migration in the region really is a spectacle. The patch itself was really nice to bird - large, canopy openings, drips, ponds, edge habitat, relatively low numbers of mosquitos, lots of room to spread out and get away from other birders when necessary.

Who doesn't love Black-billed Cuckoo? Everyone was stoked to see Black-billed Cuckoo, especially considering their status as a MEGA (and a BLOCKER) in California. Nate and I had seen one earlier back at Hooks Woods but this is the only one of the trip that was chill enough to be photographed. I'm glad I don't see them very often because I suspect I could get strongly emotionally attached to them if I lived within their range.

There will be one more Texas post, featuring nothing but Sabine Woods, and the best day of birding the entire trip.

The Smith Oaks Rookery: Spectacle of Life, Specter of Death

Moving on to the other side of High Island...the other big sanctuary here is Smith Oaks. As a migrant trap, it is better than Boy Scout Woods for many species, but this post is about the awesome, enormous rookery on the east side of the sanctuary. Before visiting the rookery, I lacked a decent photo of a Roseate Spoonbill (how embarrassing)...I no longer have that problem.

The Smith Oaks rookery is sprawling, loud and stinky; a spectacle. I was really impressed with it. The spoonbill show is something else...just look at these things. Why are they the way that they are? We are fortunate to have the world's best spoonbill species here, all of the others are vanilla in comparison.

I think we were too early to see spoonbill chicks, which is too bad. Surely they must look absurd.

It could be sharper, but this crop pleases me to no end for some reason. Makes me think of dinosaurs.

Roseate Spoonbill-Common Gallinule combo. The UTC is a region rich in combos.

Spoonbills are the main attraction, but Great Egrets seemed to be the most abundant species and they are difficult to ignore.

I don't think I've had the chance to sit and watch Great Egret nests close up before....it all felt very National Geographic. Speaking of which...

There are hella alligators at the rookery. This fairly large one slipped into the water and started hunting as we watched.

After some time it reemerged, taking a very direct path towards something...

...which turned out to be a Great Egret chick that had fallen from its nest.

I believe this was the chick's final moment before it went to that great big nest in the sky.

The last crunch.

The gator dispatched the egret chick very quickly and was back in the water in short order. Damn! Was not expecting to watch something like that unfold, let alone capture it all on the crusher. For the egret chick, you might be thinking "life is pain", but if not the for merciful reptile it would have died the slow and brutal death of exposure and starvation. Next time you run across an alligator, thank it for its service.

A couple days later we saw probably the same gator come striding out of the colony with another egret chick, though this time we did not bear witness to the chick's demise. I bet the local alligators hardly eat for much of the year compared to when the rookery is active.

Neotropic Cormorants also breed in large numbers here. In trip bird news, we managed to see all of one Double-crested Cormorant for the whole trip, an immature at this rookery.

These Almost-Geri demanded that Dan stop taking spoonbill photos and take their picture instead. In time, they will expect even more from us Non-Geri. That is the way of things...the way of The Geri.

Though the rookery is incredibly distracting (rightly so), don't forget to keep looking for migrants next to the viewing platforms (tired migrants aren't necessarily put off by throngs of loud Geri and photogs) and along the main rookery path. This glowing Blackburnian Warbler was right next to the observation deck pictured above.

More migrants in the next post!

Withering Waves of Migrants Pummel The Gulf Coast: A Brief Dispatch From Max Rebo and Friends

Most of the Philadelphia Vireos I've come across in Texas are very confiding for some reason. This one is showing me the spider it just caught, because that is what they do there. Photographed at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge.

The Upper Texas Coast. The place where birding legends are made. Where a birder's skills are constantly tested. Where a birder's tolerance for being around other birders is also constantly tested. Where the quality of birding can exceed the highest of expectations, or equally likely, be so disappointing that a birder may just have to take the next year off from birding and work on cultivating their Facebook personality while completely relying on Arby's for sustenance.

No point in trying to build any more suspense...the trip is done, and the birding was fantastic. At times, the number of migrants present were just flabbergasting. I'm not talking about mixed flocks, I mean swaths of woods just saturated with migrants...the never-ending flock that we all have been searching for. Most days I found myself being absolutely drunk on birds at one point or another. We arrived at pretty much the perfect time, and left at pretty much the perfect time; for those unfamiliar with birding out that way, the number and diversity of migrants is highly dependent on which direction the wind is blowing, the presence/absence of cold fronts and stormy weather, etc. We began birding High Island as soon as a cold front from the north had blown through (April 22), and the woods were jammed with birds. One day of moderate south winds mid-week meant a lot of turnover and new birds dropping in, as the winds reversed a day later and deposited the heap of new birds right on the coast, instead of allowing them to cruise inland on a comfy tailwind.

I'll do some more thorough posts highlighting specific areas, but wanted to get something out into the Birdosphere post haste while the sweet taste of birding victory is still fresh in the mind. 

This exhausted Prothonotary Warbler passing out on the ground in a small garden was absurdly tired and had just successfully fought through the storm that passed us earlier that morning. If there is such a thing as a poignant bird, this is one of them. I have never seen anything quite like it...it was plain old pooped. Crossing the Gulf of Mexico is hard. Photographed near Boy Scout Woods on High Island.

I knew there would be an opportunity to see spoonbills up close, but getting to hang out next to a huge rookery was, as Geri would say, just lovely. Photographed at the Smith Oaks rookery on High Island.

Bay-breasted Warbler was one of the most common warbler species in the second half of the trip...didn't exactly expect that. Their bretheren, the Blackpoll, was comparatively uncommon while we were there. Photographed at Smith Oaks.

You may have thought little of me before, but now I will stoop even lower and post a picture of a grackle. Three species of grackle are common in this area, which I don't think is something I've experienced before. This Boat-tailed Grackle dropped into a pond to a grab a little shrimpy. Very enterprising. Photographed at Sea Rim State Park.

Lots and lots and lots of tanagers were moving through while we were there, especially in the first half of the trip. Scarlet Tanagers outnumbered Summer (above), but not by much. I made the mistake of parking the car under a mulberry tree on the first morning, and later found it coated in droppings and berry residue from numerous tanagers, thrushes, grosbeaks, catbirds, Tennessee Warblers, etc. How embarrassing. Later I got mulberry butt (locally known as "butt period" apparently) from sitting on the "grandstand" seats at Boy Scout...thwarted again by tanagers and trees!

Oh! And if you were hoping to hear about a nice Geri moment, Officer Shaw assisted a Geri with a Summer Tanager he was struggling with. No, Geri didn't think it was a Scarlet Tanager...he thought it was a Blackburnian Warbler. Just another day birding the Texas coast. Photographed near Boy Scout Woods on High Island.

Friends of the blog, Dipper Dan, This Machine Nate, and Officer Shaw all got in on the sweet sweet migrant action multiple days, and MAX REBO was more than pleased about how the tour went...MAX might decide to run it again next year, especially if folks inquire about it now! That's right, you may get another chance to get completely humbled by migrants! Stay tuned for more highlights from the trip, I assure you these posts won't be of the "make lemons into lemonade" variety, more like "make opium into heroin". And who doesn't like metaphorical avian heroin?

Winter Mexico Tour Y2K16, The Final Days: Laguna La Maria, Playa del Oro, Rancho Primavera

Ahhh, the final Mexico post. Let's push through! Laguna La Maria is known for its picnic tables. This is because Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrushes (trip bird!) like to forage near them.

This is the same Black-throated Green Warbler from my last Mexico post. I don't know if I'll see any more this year, so here is another photo. Farewell, Black-throated Green Warbler.

There's a lot of Solitary Vireos in Nayarit, Jalisco and Colima. Most are Plumbeous, but Cassin's (like this one) are fairly common. This is isn't a crush obviously, but Cassin's Vireo has never graced BB&B before, so there it is and here we are.

Dipper Dan was fuming from the lack of lifers that morning. Can't say I blame him.

After making our way west to the coast and north past Manzanillo, we took a detour to check the Manzanillo airport marshes, mentioned in Howell's guide...it was awful. Definitively the worst birding spot of the trip...the marsh is not what it used to be, and I don't recommend setting aside any time to bird here. Only bird of interest was an adult male Snail Kite soaring over the road.

That night we stayed in Barra de Navidad, which is full of gringos but small - legit seafood though. Sweet, luscious concha was had. We randomly found the place that was listed as the cheapest in town according to my Mexi travel guide, and I'm pretty sure that title was not awarded unjustly. Don Francisco was giddy, it cost so little money. Lucky for us, we got a room on the roof, which overlooks a little lagoon, which turned out to be a great place to drink and bird simultaneously. Unexpectedly, Barra de Navidad happens to be home to an absolutely enormous Barn Swallow roost, which was located just a couple of blocks away.

Don Francisco, Stilt and Flycatcher Jen gaze upward into the swallow swarm directly above us, getting ready to land on things like windowsills for the night.

We stayed in Barra de Navidad in order to bird the Playa Del Oro road the next morning. The birding was good! The major highlight was a Golden-crowned Emerald that Dipper Dan found, which was the last lifer of the trip for me. After so many hummingbird failures and the stress of being gripped off on yet another target species, this was truly satisfying. We dipped on Flammulated Flycatcher, but had lots of Orange-breasted Buntings, White-bellied Wrens (new trip bird, common here), and an absurd number of Red-billed Tropicbirds scoped from the beach.

Looking southward along the beach at Playa del Oro. See that big offshore rock on the right? It is surrounded by tropicbirds. We had some Black Terns offshore as well (trip bird!). The eBird checklist from the morning can be perused here.

After Don Francisco frolicked in the water and promptly lost his glasses (which gave birth to "Hank", whom we all love and miss dearly) and lunching in Barra de Navidad, we lurked north up the coast, stopping at the same random wetlands that we birded on the way south, in order to dip on Collared Plover yet again. The dip was a success!

This Yellow-crowned Night-Heron is not a Collared Plover.

Neither is this Roseate Spoonbill.

Flycatcher Jen and Stilt ensure that no Collared Plovers are nearby.

That afternoon we made our triumphant return to Rancho Primavera. Bonnie informed us that a Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird had appeared while we were gone, which enraged Dipper Dan. We did not see it. But we did have a mellow morning of birding the property on the final day, which was a good way to end the trip.

Streak-backed Orioles came in for the crushiest encounters.

We saw a lot of dingy Streak-backed Orioles on the trip, but this one brought the facemelt.

Before this trip, I had only seen one Plain-capped Starthroat...for about 5 seconds. It was not a pleasant experience. Rancho Primavera provided many superior viewing opportunities.

This is a good bird...large hummingbirds have a certain allure to them. I'll have to look at one in Arizona sometime. According to Bonnie, the property doesn't get the number or diversity of hummingbirds that they used to get, but I reckon that could change at any time.

Goodbye Yellow-winged Caciques. You are a weird endemic.

So long Masked Tityra. In what country will I see you next?

Adios, Orange-fronted Parakeet. May you remain plentiful.

Vaya con dios, Black-throated Magpie-Jay. I still do not quite comprehend how you exist.

After dropping Stilt off at the Puerto Vallarta airport, the remaining nerds made one last desperate try for Collared Plover (a bird that I hate) at a river mouth at the edge of town, which of course was unsuccessful but it was very birdy and seems like a good spot for them. After that, we drank some mezcal in the airport and went our separate ways...except I sat next to Flycatcher Jen on the plane (Mexican Miracle) and got a ride home from Don Francisco's family from the airport in San Francisco.

There's not a whole lot I would have done differently on this trip...a second day birding "Voclan de Fuego" would have been great, and we should have birded Microondas La Cumbre instead of birding north of Colima (toward Laguna La Maria). A second day of birding Tecuitata (Nayarit) would have been good as well. There are some additional locations near San Blas that we did not get to, but I feel like we did quite well with our target birds there.

But, of course, we did not get everything. I got gripped off on Amethyst-throated Hummingbird and Red-breasted Chat (repeatedly and hurtfully). We did not get Banded Quail, Collared Plover, Mexican Hermit, Sparkling-tailed Hummingbird, Bee Hummingbird, any interesting swifts (ugh...major failure), Eared Poorwill, Bare-shanked Screech-Owl (not that we looked, they are at Microondas La Cumbre), Thick-billed Parrot, Flammulated Flycatcher, Mangrove Vireo, Aztec Thrush, Colima Warbler, and Ruddy-breasted Seedeater. I think that covers most of the dipped-on birds we could have reasonably seen.

But you know what? Fuck those birds I didn't see. I got 47 lifers on this trip (!) and had a hell of a time. I saw 350 species or so in less than two and a half weeks, and I only had food poisoning for one day! Thanks to Flycatcher Jen (who gets listed first because she craves notoriety), Don Francisco, Stilt and Dipper Dan for joining me on another very fucking nerdy and very fucking successful birding trip.