Texbirders,
Spent yesterday at my Dad's place in Guadalupe County (just down the street
from Susan's Warbler Woods) doing our annual winter count and had several
interesting birds including one vireo that we identified as a Cassin's
Vireo. I realize that this bird would be very unusual but we had very good
looks, and I could not make it into a Blue-headed Vireo even though I know
that bird is far more likely (in fact we also had two Blue-headed Vireos
over the course of day which only made the difference of this bird more
obvious). This is the description that I put in eBird "Single bird seen
actively feeding in an open mesquite woodland, bird was viewed in good
light for approximately five minutes; several key factors noted, 1) bird
was a medium-sized vireo with two white wing bars and obvious, complete
white eye rings and lore creating spectacled look, 2) upperparts uniformly
olive gray-green with no contrast between head and back color, and 3)
underparts clean white except for yellow wash along sides. Distinguished
from White-eyed Vireo by white not yellow spectacles, from Hutton's Vireo
by strong, complete eye ring, more greenish tones, and yellow on sides, and
from most similar Blue-headed Vireo by complete lack of contrast between
back and head, lack of grey in head color and very weak contrast between
throat and sides of head." When we got back to the house consulted Sibley,
it was a very good match to what he calls a 1st fall Cassin's. Sadly, I did
not get photos despite going back several times with camera but could not
refind the bird.
I was a little surprised that there appear to only be two records in eBird
(unless I'm doing something wrong with my search, a bird I reported in
eBird in Kimble County is not showing up either), so I'd be interested to
hear if others have had sightings that have not been reported to eBird or
is the sighting really that far out of the box?
Other fun birds included Verdin, 3 Pine Warblers, and 4 flyover American
White Pelicans.
Thanks,
Noreen Baker
Austin, Tx
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