TexBirders,
I have to confess to being responsible for apparently that single “winter”
Texas record of Botteri’s Sparrows, detected on one of the lomas east of
Brownsville on Dec. 6, 1982.
http://ebird.org/ebird/tx/view/checklist/S22137316
I have been quizzed previously and privately about that sighting. I have no
detailed notes on the two birds I encountered but I recall them vividly because
they contrasted so distinctly with the several (expected) Cassin’s that I
flushed that day. They were much buffier than the gray Cassin’s. These were
flushed from the grassy margins (typically Spartina spartinae) or grassland
“skirt” which surrounds the dense brush on many of those lomas. The birds
popped up briefly but then retreated to the dense thornbrush.
The lomas east of Brownsville harbor a very distinctive habitat type of often
impenetrable thornbrush with high plant species diversity. Several of the
lomas, especially those without regular vehicular access (at that time) were
nearly pristine, being generally ungrazed, uncut, and unburned through many
decades. They are certainly an understudied and underappreciated subset of the
interesting LRGV habitats. Their inaccessibility protects them. In this
sense, I was not particularly surprised at the time to find “wintering” (or
late) individuals of a species which supposedly withdraws completely from Texas
during the cooler months.
I was working in the private consulting business at that time, doing wildlife
surveys for the Brownsville Navigation District. Through some negotiations
that I navigated our client through, a 99-year lease for about 5,000 acres of
those lomas and mudflats was secured for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s
Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR. That remains one of my prouder accomplishments
during my tenure in the private sector.
Chuck Sexton
Austin, TXEdit your Freelists account settings for TEXBIRDS at
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