Texas Trip ~ November 29, 2023

I had been reading reports of many "hot" birds that were being seen in Texas. The story I heard was that they were having a drought in Mexico, which was pushing birds up into Texas. When the count rose to five "life birds", a rare thing for one area when your life list is over 860 species, I called Jason Horn to see if he wanted to join me. When he said he was "in", I set up a non-stop flight from Philadelphia to Houston for the early morning of the 29th.

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Wednesday, November 29th

I picked up Jason around 4:45 AM and we headed for the Philadelphia Airport. It was good that I chose not to book the connecting flight on to San Antonio because we took off an hour late due to a technical issue with our plane and would probably have missed the connection in the process.

We got our rental car in short order, worked our way through Houston, and drove the 3.5 hours to Corpus Christi, where our first target bird was being seen. We parked at the corner Schatzell and Chaparral Streets and started looking for the Cattle Tyrant, a 1st North American record that somehow got here from South America! We were checking the area for it when two birders told us that it was about a block to the south. We thanked them, walked over there, and spotted the bird catching flies around a dumpster. The bird was pretty much oblivious to us. At one point, it grabbed a fly less than a foot away from my hip! It spent some time flycatching from a tinted window. I wondered if it was checking its reflection, hoping that it was another bird of its species to join up with. Here are some of the photos I got of my first "lifer" for the trip.

Cattle Tyrant

Cattle Tyrant with its orange crown stripe exposed.

It was ironic that the bird was hopping around the base of a "Wrong Way" sign since it had definitely gone in the wrong direction.

Cattle Tyrant at the base of the "Wrong Way" sign.

Jason wanted to look for the American Flamingos that were being seen near Port Aransas, so we went to "Charlie's Pasture" and walked the boardwalk out to the observation tower. Three Whooping Cranes, two adults and one young bird, were feeding in the distance to the north of the tower.

Whooping Cranes

Soon after, Jason spotted the three American Flamingos flying in from the bay side. They flew back and forth, allowing me to get some half-decent flight shots of them before landing.

American Flamingos

On the way back out, we saw both the white morph and dark morph of the Reddish Egret.

The white morph of Reddish Egret.

The dark or normal morph of Reddish Egret.

Other birds seen there included Gadwall, Northern Pintail, Redhead, Lesser Scaup, American Avocet, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Willet, Dunlin, Least Sandpiper, Ring-billed and Laughing Gull, Black Skimmer, Double-crested Cormorant, American White and Brown Pelican, Little Blue and Tricolored Heron, Snowy and Great Egret, Great Blue Heron, White Ibis, Roseate Spoonbill, Osprey, Northern Harrier, Belted Kingfisher, Loggerhead Shrike, and Savannah Sparrow.

We left the Corpus Christi area and started the 2.5 hour drive to the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Along the way, we saw Greater White-fronted Goose, Pied-billed Grebe, White-winged Dove, American Coot, Wilson's Snipe, White-tailed Hawk, Crested Caracara, American Kestrel, and Eastern Meadowlark. We spent the night at a motel in Harlingen, north of Brownsville.

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