Birding

[hookem2010 2700]

There's a brown pelican hanging out at Town Lake where Waller Creek dumps into it. I haven't seen it yet, but they hardly ever range inland and there are only a couple of records from the county, so a very cool find.

[TexPx 2336]

Another Yellow-Crowned Night Heron...

 

Saw one of those sitting on the edge of a pond while we were walking the dogs this morning.

Figured it was some kind of Heron. Beautiful bird.

[hookem2010 2700]

I made the trek down the Hill of Life to (successfully!) chase the Swainson's warbler turned up a few days ago by Austin's teenage birding wunderkind. Not the flashiest of birds, but only Travis County's 3rd recors. It was singing its little heart out and I could hear it 5 minutes before I got to him. The hike back up with 20 lbs of baby strapped to my chest was fun. Nice little bow to wrap up spring migration.

[Jerry Callo 8959]

34 minutes ago, hookem2010 said:

I made the trek down the Hill of Life to (successfully!) chase the Swainson's warbler turned up a few days ago by Austin's teenage birding wunderkind. Not the flashiest of birds, but only Travis County's 3rd recors. It was singing its little heart out and I could hear it 5 minutes before I got to him. The hike back up with 20 lbs of baby strapped to my chest was fun. Nice little bow to wrap up spring migration.

All that work and no picture?

[hookem2010 2700]

Oh, I got a picture! It's just through my bins with a phone and a fidgety baby hanging from my chest. Wanna see it!!! Got some crisp audio at least.

[WBT 20973]

I saw this mockingbird dance back in April.  I don't remember ever seeing them do this before.  Google says it's to claim territory.

 

[DoobieWah 1535]

On 5/6/2023 at 5:51 PM, Mdhorn said:

 

 

Hey! I know him! 
 

From this morning. 

[hookem2010 2700]

Barred owls are awesome.

I thought I'd take one last stroll through my neighborhood park to look for lingering migrants. There was some decent activity, but nothing special. Decided on one last mini-loop through some trees and found my multi-year spring migrant nemesis black-billed cuckoo. These little bastards are rare to begin with this far west, but they're also secretive AF, so they only get reported once every year or two in WilCo. My awful attempt at a pic versus what they actually look like...

[DougO 5265]

Nice cuckoo! They are usually really tough to photograph out in the open.

[hookem2010 2700]

My photo setup is pretty legit, so that's how I get all these sweet shots. Tie a large dog around my waist, push a generally impatient and uninterested baby in a stroller, then attempt to hold my phone up to my bins, producing a photo suggestive of something that could be a bird.

[Biff Tannen 46165]

Lots of Candian Geese honking over Telluride right now. Pretty fun. I got fuckin no pics. 

[hookem2010 2700]

A yellow-green vireo showed up near Lake Somerville. These turn up in the valley perhaps annually in very small numbers, but are scarce elsewhere in the United States. The baby and I successfully chased it this morning. It was the best kind of chase, with another person already there and on the bird so I didn't have to do any of the hard work. Didn't even try for a photo this time, but this is what it looks like. Quite similar to our locally breeding red-eyed vireo

In shitty bird news, congress is working to delist the lesser prairie chicken from the ESA just 6 months after it was added. It's ONLY lost 97% of its population in the last 60 years, so obviously this decision is based on firmly established science 😠

[Biff Tannen 46165]

32 minutes ago, hookem2010 said:

In shitty bird news, congress is working to delist the lesser prairie chicken from the ESA just 6 months after it was added. It's ONLY lost 97% of its population in the last 60 years, so obviously this decision is based on firmly established science

Ranchers pushing back or what?

[hookem2010 2700]

I'm not positive if ranchers or drillers are the bigger issue in this particular case. Pretty much all the grouse-like species of the central and western grasslands are completely boned if conservation measures aren't substantially stepped up.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

I believe its a Black Crowned Heron

 

[DougO 5265]

I went black-capped vireo hunting last week. Their population has been booming over the last several years and no longer considered endangered. 

 

[DoobieWah 1535]

On 6/3/2023 at 6:46 PM, DougO said:

I went black-capped vireo hunting last week.

How many does it take to feed a family of four?

😬

[DougO 5265]

4 hours ago, DoobieWah said:

How many does it take to feed a family of four?

😬

They're about the size of a chicken leg drumette but that's mostly feathers. So probably a few hundred.

[DoobieWah 1535]

Jeeeeez. They must be freaking delicious!!

[HouTex 1942]

On 5/13/2023 at 7:45 AM, hookem2010 said:

There's a brown pelican hanging out at Town Lake where Waller Creek dumps into it. I haven't seen it yet, but they hardly ever range inland and there are only a couple of records from the county, so a very cool find.

I know a guy who was, stress was, a catfish farmer.  His pond was about 20 miles inland in Brazoria County.  After several years of success, pelicans found his farm and a neighbor’s farm.  They ate every last one of the catfish.  He said they came in like a squadron of Japanese zeros.  The neighbor spent some time in the big house after shooting a few trying to protect his inventory. 

[RexWilson 1502]

In Tulum Mexico and this guy caught my eye. Got a Star Trek Geordi thing going on

 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Great kiskadee. I see them in south Texas. But last week I saw two in the Houston area. I couldn’t get a shot. Never seen this far north before.

[DougO 5265]

I took this painted bunting photo a couple of weeks ago before it was even officially summer. A bit rough around the edges, but still proudly sporting the colors.

 

[Not that Bob 743]

Give me an idea of what these 6PM acrobats are swooping down to catch a bill full of water from the pool on the fly. I'd say nighthawks but nighthawks are mottled or stripedy. These guys are toast colored on the breast and belly and black or dark brown on the back. They move and dart so fast I can't get a picture. I mean unbelievably fast and agile. They can dart 4 different directions in a second. They'll group up and run off a buzzard.   

[hookem2010 2700]

Barn swallows? They've got a deeply forked tail, dark blue back and rusty underparts. They seem to me like more acrobatic fliers even when compared to other swallows. Certainly smaller than nighthawk, but lots of small birds will harass larger ones. And they will definitely swoop down to drink from pools.

[hookem2010 2700]

[Not that Bob 743]

I'll look tonight to see if my guys have that white collar.

 

[Not that Bob 743]

Swift I think. They certainly live up to that name. 

[TexasEd 8266]

Found this Painted Bunting in the middle of the road in Lampasas Co.  It could not fly and I assumed it was hit by a car.  I picked it up and took it to my friend’s place and let it rest in the shade, gave it water drops from my finger and it eventually recovered and flew away about an hour later.  At first just over the fence into the grass and then over our heads for a flyby and then into a tree.

 

[TexasEd 8266]

The next day hiking around his place I saw this baby vulture under a rock outcrop.  It showed signs of having been there a while and was being fed.  We saw the parents fly in and out of the area the day before.  It made this eerie hissing moaning noise at me.  When I first saw it I thought it might be an owl but it turned towards me and saw its head.

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by TexasEd

[TexasEd 8266]

We usually have a family of Screech Owls in our back yard.  Last year they had 3 babies and all 5 would fly though our yard and roost in our large oak looking for prey as the littles learned to hunt.The tree picture is a Hawk roosting where the Owls like to sit.  It’s usually too dark to capture the owls but one night I got an owl sitting on a cooler lid.

Edited July 5, 2023 by TexasEd

[hookem2010 2700]

Brown booby (of the seabird variety) hanging out at a pond in S. Austin. I may need to make the trip tomorrow if he sticks around.

[WBT 20973]

I'm up in the Columbia River Gorge for work and came across this osprey nest in an army corps of engineers park

Edited July 9, 2023 by WBT

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

I mentioned to my wife the other day that I wondered why none of the scores of birds that visit our feeders ever seem to get fat.

This morning, there were a bunch of red crossbills at a feeder and one female on the ground beneath the feeder. She was so fat that she few off like an overloaded bomber on the Doolittle Raid while the others few off vertically and effortlessly.

I guess my initial assertion was wrong.

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

On 5/19/2023 at 7:56 PM, WBT said:

I saw this mockingbird dance back in April.  I don't remember ever seeing them do this before.  Google says it's to claim territory.

 

We’ll, that’s intimidating as hell. 

[Biff Tannen 46165]

There was a story on the news this morning that a hawk in south Austin has been attacking people who go near its nest.  We've got a pair of hawks in my neighborhood right now and they are super chill.  How common is this?

[hookem2010 2700]

Not super familiar with hawks doing this a bunch. Mockingbirds certainly do, and in Australia, magpies will really fuck your shit up.

[Biff Tannen 46165]

1 hour ago, hookem2010 said:

Not super familiar with hawks doing this a bunch. Mockingbirds certainly do, and in Australia, magpies will really fuck your shit up.

Yeah, I've gotten dive bombed by a mockingbird before.  Seems like a hawk would be a little more concerning.

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

16 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

There was a story on the news this morning that a hawk in south Austin has been attacking people who go near its nest.  We've got a pair of hawks in my neighborhood right now and they are super chill.  How common is this?

We have a cordilleran flycatcher nest by our patio. They were frequently dive bombing us, and we thought it was because we were too close to the nest. Then, one day, a fly landed on my calf and I was slowly moving my hand over to swat it when one of the flycatchers flashed by and grabbed the fly right off my leg, making no contact with my skin. We began to notice that what they were doing was picking off insects that were hovering near us.

[hookem2010 2700]

The booby I had mentioned above sadly didn't last a week here before it was found dead. One of the bittersweet aspects of chasing rarities is that some injury or illness may have forced them out of their normal range, or even if healthy, they may never make it back to an area with others of their species, ending their chances of breeding.

[hookem2010 2700]

5 minutes ago, ImissWallyPryor said:

We have a cordilleran flycatcher nest by our patio. They were frequently dive bombing us, and we thought it was because we were too close to the nest. Then, one day, a fly landed on my calf and I was slowly moving my hand over to swat it when one of the flycatchers flashed by and grabbed the fly right off my leg, making no contact with my skin. We began to notice that what they were doing was picking off insects that were hovering near us.

That's awesome! As of last week, the cordilleran technically no longer exists, as it has been re-lumped as a single species with pacific-slope flycatcher, now called western flycatcher. They had only been split I think a couple of decades ago in the first place, before ornithologists called a mulligan on that decision.

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

1 hour ago, hookem2010 said:

That's awesome! As of last week, the cordilleran technically no longer exists, as it has been re-lumped as a single species with pacific-slope flycatcher, now called western flycatcher. They had only been split I think a couple of decades ago in the first place, before ornithologists called a mulligan on that decision.

My wife read something about that, too, but we keep calling it a cordilleran. This is what Wiki says, but it’s not perfectly up to date:

This bird is virtually identical to the Pacific-slope flycatcher. These two species were formerly considered a single species known as western flycatcher. The species were split by the American Ornithologists’ Union in 1989.^[2] The Pacific-slope flycatcher is a breeding bird of the Pacific Coast forests and mountain ranges from California to Alaska; the Cordilleran is a breeding bird of the Rocky Mountains. They have different songs and calls.

They can’t make up their minds. 
 

 

Edited July 11, 2023 by ImissWallyPryor

[hookem2010 2700]

I escaped from hell last week to visit family in Colorado. I mostly savored the cool weather and fantastic scenery, but I always squeeze in some birding when I leave town.This trip was highlighted by a brief walk through Garden of the Gods. Dozens of white-throated swifts poured out from the cliffs while a pair of juvenile prairie falcons peered down from the top of the red rocks (Lifer #523!).

If this heat will ever abate, fall migration is picking up around Austin. I just can't handle it after 9 am, and it's not even particularly pleasant before then either.

 

[DougO 5265]

Despite the extreme heat, there have been some signs of Fall migration, like this female Wilson's warbler that showed up yesterday. 

 

[WBT 20973]

I was running a sprinkler in my garden and had at least 2 male and 1 female Baltimore orioles come take a shower.  When I went out to move the sprinkler, I put out some orange halves but I don't think they went to them.

[WBT 20973]

On 7/11/2023 at 1:06 PM, hookem2010 said:

The booby I had mentioned above sadly didn't last a week here before it was found dead. One of the bittersweet aspects of chasing rarities is that some injury or illness may have forced them out of their normal range, or even if healthy, they may never make it back to an area with others of their species, ending their chances of breeding.

Yeah, it is kind of sad.  I thought about that with the white wagtail that showed up in Austin a few years ago.  It might never see its kind again.

[hookem2010 2700]

One of the weirder Texas records, behind the Steller's sea eagle that was seen once here, and I think might still be cruising along the Northeastern seaboard.

[High Plains Drifter 11187]

On 6/9/2023 at 9:49 AM, HouTex said:

I know a guy who was, stress was, a catfish farmer.  His pond was about 20 miles inland in Brazoria County.  After several years of success, pelicans found his farm and a neighbor’s farm.  They ate every last one of the catfish.  He said they came in like a squadron of Japanese zeros.  The neighbor spent some time in the big house after shooting a few trying to protect his inventory. 

 

many years ago, some cormorants discovered that Barton Springs Pool had a large fish population. A month later, not a fish to be found. IT was amazing the size of those fish they could eat. At some point, I realized they always swallowed the fish head first to keep the dorsal fin from sticking in their throats. A few times they would bring up catfish that probably weighed as much as they did. If they were unable to eat them because they were so big, they would let them go, but often the fish would die anyway.

I used to love sitting in the lifeguard chair and watch the cormorants fly in, dive, eat, and fly out. When I was off duty, I'd grab a diving mask and watch them swim underwater. Incredibly fast.

There was a big stink about whether or not the City of Austin should do something. Save the Fish vs Save the Cormorants. It was quite the dilemma.

 

 

[davidg 4057]

 
many years ago, some cormorants discovered that Barton Springs Pool had a large fish population. A month later, not a fish to be found. IT was amazing the size of those fish they could eat. At some point, I realized they always swallowed the fish head first to keep the dorsal fin from sticking in their throats. A few times they would bring up catfish that probably weighed as much as they did. If they were unable to eat them because they were so big, they would let them go, but often the fish would die anyway.
I used to love sitting in the lifeguard chair and watch the cormorants fly in, dive, eat, and fly out. When I was off duty, I'd grab a diving mask and watch them swim underwater. Incredibly fast.
There was a big stink about whether or not the City of Austin should do something. Save the Fish vs Save the Cormorants. It was quite the dilemma.
 
 

We had a double crested cormorant depredation permit for a while. We have a small lake that borders up onto a very large lake and the double crested cormorants got pretty bad after a while. We would be duck hunting on the smaller lake and my dad would just set in a flyway between the lakes and pound cormorants all morning long. They wised up eventually and figured out the small lake was not the place to be if they didn’t want BB steel shot blasted at them.

[hookem2010 2700]

Just successfully chased Travis County's 1st record of hermit warbler at Mills Pond. When a successful outing is seeing your target bird for maybe 2 seconds, you start to wonder what the hell you're doing with your free time. Nonetheless, a life bird for me and #395 for Texas! At this snail's pace, I should hit 400 by the end of the decade.