Birders:
A minute ago I found the below in my Drafts folder. As fresh as it reads,
it must have been written at least two or three weeks ago. In any case it is
far better than I could attempt this late after the event.
On June 29 I led a lady and her two grand-daughters on an absolutely bird
hike on an upcoming trail at Government Canyon State Natural Area
http://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/government-canyon . Before we got out on
the trail one of the front desk folks told me about the guy who was asking
for opinions about the photo of a Golden-cheeked Warbler that he had just
shot with his Canon DSLR + telephoto. A few minutes we ran into the guy.
When I asked him about his bird, he flipped through the pages on the display
panel on the back side of his camera. It was a really nice photo of a male
GCWA. As an agent of the Friends of Government Canyon Activities Committee
and a member of the Antonio Audubon Society Bird Records Committee I IDed
the bird and got one of the guy's business cards.
The first bush between the restroom-office building and the pavilion got us
Northern Cardinals, Northern Mockingbirds, etc. and Hutton's Vireo. We also
got to add Brown-headed Cowbird to the list. Then we took off on the
upcoming trail. From what we saw this is going to be a preferred birding
route. We had the most continuous good birding that I have ever seen at
GCSNA since 2005. Part of it was due to the continuously good habitat. At
some point I finally noticed the lack of a browse line in the trees. In
Central Texas this is almost unheard of. A good part of it was due to the
eager spotting that the young girls did. They had done something weird:
before the hike they had prepared for it by listening to calls of birds we
might find on the hike. That is how Field Sparrow was added to the list.
Later in the hike one of the girls had a hawk soaring a bit to our nominal
north. All it was the first Zone-tailed Hawk I had seen at Government
Canyon. Chances are that this was the same bird that one of the staff
resource folks had seen a few weeks previously in the Government Canyon
Creek drainage. It is possible that a pair of Zone-tailed Hawks nested at
GCSNA in 2015. This was one of the finest days of birding I have ever had
at Government Canyon since I started volunteering there in 2005.
One quick note: This past Sunday, July 26, I heard one pair of Painted
Buntings at Government Canyon. Apparently they have mostly gone south to
their "wintering grounds".
Onward!
Steve
Stevan Hawkins
Friends of Government Canyon, member
San Antonio
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