[texbirds] South Texas Falcon Fest....take 2

From: "Chris Harrison" <sandboa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Texbirds" <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2013 18:00:35 -0600
Oops.apparently my telephone chose to send my last message in cuneiform
instead of a font Texbirds could recognize, so I send it again in case
anyone's curiosity has been piqued...
 

Texbirders,

 

After a little bit of Valley birding on 12/28, we made a quick run to Laguna
Atascosa and then headed north from there. 

Leaving Laguna Atascosa we came across a beautiful Aplomado Falcon on the
power pole along 106 just east of the refuge (26.19852,-97.41149).
Unfortunately, I couldn't get a photo before car behind us scared it off.

 

Spurred on by this falcon sighting, we decided to look for the Prairie
Falcon in Willacy County.  We found it, just as described, along Jansen Road
just north of 1018.  We photographed it (poorly) from a long way up the road
which did not seem to disturb it due to the distance.  Unfortunately after
taking a token photo, we had to drive down the road and it flew right as we
drove under its power pole even though we didn't stop and stare.  It flew
off to the east.   We continued south on Jansen hoping it would come back to
its hunting perch and that we hadn't disturbed it too much.  As we
approached the south end of the road, we saw a large falcon fly over us at
the junction of 1018 and land on the railing of the water tower.  Since it
was so high I figured I could get a photo without disturbing it again, so we
drove up the road a ways and I took a shot of it from a distance.  It wasn't
art, but more of a documentary shot of a dot on a tower than anything else.


 

Several hours later however I checked my photos and was surprised to see the
that falcon I photographed on the tower had morphed into an adult Peregrine
Falcon!   We were positive the initial falcon just a few hundred yards north
was a Prairie so apparently there is a Peregrine hanging out near this
Prairie Falcon. 

 

So we got three large falcon species in less than one hour of looking. We
did search for a Gyrfalcon to round out the day's large falcon list, but
came up empty. ;-)

 

We did not see any Mountain Plovers in the area.

 

And just to add to the falcon trip, we got wonderful looks at a nice Merlin
at Aransas this morning (12/29) and of course we saw Kestrels and Caracaras
as well.

I'm not sure if I've ever seen 5 falcons (+ a caracara) in a 24 hour period
before.   Pretty cool stuff.

 

And to finish off our little "raptor fest", we came across a "majestic" Bald
Eagle just east of Austwell.  I put majestic in quotes since it is hard to
use that phrase about a splotchy looking subadult Bald Eagle elegantly
digging in to a road-killed raccoon on the side of the road.

 

Chris Harrison

San Antonio

 



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[texbirds] South Texas Falcon Fest....take 2

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