[texbirds] West Texas Trip

  • From: "Susan Heath" <sheath@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: "TexBirds" <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 21:18:21 -0500

TexBirders,

Tom Morris, Tad Finnell and myself just returned from a quick West Texas
trip where we had a fantastic time and got most of our target species. We
started on Friday afternoon at Carolyn Ohl-Johnson's fantastic Christmas
Mountains Oasis where we were treated to several Lucifer Hummingbirds,
Black-chinned Hummingbirds, Blue Grosbeaks, House Finches, Painted Buntings
and a male Varied Bunting coming to the feeders. It was a rainbow of western
bird color! After a few hours there we moved onto Big Bend National Park. We
stopped at the picnic area along TX 118 near Elephant Mountain and enjoyed a
family of Vermilion Flycatchers, singing Bell's Vireos, and a Cassin's
Kingbird (our target for the stop). In Study Butte we stopped at the gas
station and had the biggest, cheapest ice cream cones any of us can
remember. Excellent on a hot day! In the park we went straight to Panther
Junction and then up to The Basin. We only had time to walk around a little
bit but we found Scott's Orioles, Black-headed Grosbeaks, Mexican Jays,
Cactus Wrens, Rufous-crowned Sparrow, Say's Phoebe, and of course Canyon
Towhees. A pair of Say's Phoebes have a nest on top of one of the light
fixtures that you can see from the lodge restaurant with three chicks. It
was very fun watching them while we were eating.

The next morning we started at 5:00 and headed up the Pinnacles Trail.
Around 5:40 we heard our first Mexican Whip-poor-will and 10 minutes later,
as predicted by Greg Lavaty who we ran into at Carolyn's, several were
singing around us at the large pine tree laying along the side of the trail.
We hiked on and soon the Black-headed Grosbeaks started singing and then the
Mexican Jays moved in clearly looking for a hand out. We did not indulge
them. I made that mistake once before and they followed us for miles. Once
we got to the switchbacks we started seeing the mountain species. Canyon
Wrens singing from the cliff faces, White-throated Swifts and Violet-green
Swallows chittering and soaring overhead, Acorn Woodpeckers making their
raucous calls. It was great! A Band-tailed Pigeon winged by and a Spotted
Towhee zoomed by clearly not happy we were invading his territory. The
Cordilleran Flycatchers got going and we found our first Colima Warbler.
Somewhere in there we were passed by two hikers who we later realized were
Mark Lockwood and a friend of his, Paul. I jokingly said they could find the
tanager and have it staked out for us as they passed. We reached the Emory
Peak trail about 8:20 and were glad for the level trail onward to Boot
Springs. As the boot came into view a Zone-tailed Hawk soared by. More
Violet-green Swallows and some Common Ravens. We arrived at The Spot about
9:10 and Mark and Paul were there and indeed had the bird all staked out.
Within 10 minutes we had seen the Flame-colored Tanager and a couple young
Painted Redstarts. We hung around and saw an adult Painted Redstart and
several Blue-throated Hummingbirds, Hutton's Vireo and White-breasted
Nuthatches. We also saw the female Western Tanager with the Flame-colored
Tanager in tow. Fantastic! 

We headed back down about 10:30 and got Black-tailed Gnatcatcher and
Bushtits on our way down. It was a really great trip and I thank everyone
who gave us advice and also Mark and Paul for hanging around until us slow
folks could get there to see the birds.

Sue

Susan A. Heath, PhD
Gulf Coast Bird Observatory
103 Hwy 332 West
Lake Jackson, TX 77566
979-480-0999
www.gcbo.org




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