Long walk. Long drive. Long two days.

On Sunday we started off at Estero Llano and joined the "bird walk". It was windy and cold. Again. Note to self:  I need to pay better attention to weather forcasts when packing for trips. Shorts and t-shirts are not cutting it. 

Despite the slightly less than stellar weather we pulled a lot of new year birds and valley specialties. Common Paraque is always pretty cool to see. Tropical and Couch's kingbirds calling away, a black chinned and buff bellied hummingbirds zipping around, plain chachalaca lurking in the scrub and kiskadees loudly calling from everywhere make this part of the country a place every bird nerd should visit. 

News came in around the time we were  finishing up that a blue bunting had been found at Santa Ana NWR. So of course we headed over there. Like we wouldn't. Right. We met the man who found the bird in the parking lot, viewed his photos and congratulated him on a great find when we arrived. We set off following a park employee to the spot where the bird had been spotted. We walked the trail for more than an hour with no luck. And virtually no birds except for a few very loud white eyed vireos. We decided at that point to explore more of the park. If you've never been there let me tell you that it is large. Very large. 

More birds new for the trip include 

Altamira Orioles, Harris's hawks and an over wintering juvenile broad winged hawk.  At this point we decided to head back to the car, grab something quick to eat and figure out what we were doing next. For some reason we decided to hike the cattail trail to see if we could spot a Fulvous whistling duck that had been reported earlier but had moved deeper into the park. Remember when I told you that the park was large? Well we really had no idea until we hiked that trail.  Large doesn't even cover it. What was supposed to be "about a mile" turned into a 6 mile round-trip death march.   Without a single fucking whistling duck for that matter. Five hours spent at the refuge with very little to show for it. To say the least we were a little disappointed and exhausted. We headed back to the hotel where I managed to fall asleep in about nine minutes. 

When the alarm went off at 4:30 AM this morning my feet were still throbbing but I managed to pull myself together and haul us on a 4 hour drive up to Goose Island State Park. We had not even parked the car before we spotted the first target for the day. Two whooping cranes were foraging at the side of a small pond on private land just off the road. Photos were taken and within 5 minutes the birds took flight and flew off into Aransas NWR to join three others. Five in a day. Well actually in 15 minutes. Not bad at all. Luck was definitely on our side. After searching around the area for just a little while we decided to book it down to a rest area off of Highway 281. A painted redstart had been seen there for a couple of days and we decided to give it a shot. An hour and a half later we were looking at this beautiful warbler foraging on the ground, fanning its tail and calling nearly at our feet. High-fives all around. This was not a bird I expected to see so early in the year or in Texas for that matter. But it was a welcome pick up after yesterday's misses. From there we decided to head back south and check on a few more of the local parks. On the drive down at 75 miles an hour I spotted a scissor tailed flycatcher and immediately pulled over and backed up on the highway ( yes on the highway) so that we all could get great looks and some photos. Unfortunately all of the places we wanted to see to the south of us were closed on Mondays. Go figure. I suppose a little research ahead of time would have told us that but at least it put us in position for the last couple of targets of the day. 

 We drove around the McAllen area listening for the raucous, jungle like calls of parrots and parakeets. Before long we spotted a large flock of parakeets flying ahead of us. Of course we were on one of the busiest roads with the most traffic lights I have ever been on in Texas at the time. Expletives all around. 

 We managed to track down the flock as they were perched on telephone wires outside of a Chase bank. It really is unbelievable how loud 300 parakeets can be while sitting on wires above your head. Shortly after arriving, the guys had taken 700 photographs when a Harris's  hawk cruises in and makes the birds a little uncomfortable. They took to the sky shrieking and headed off to the east. At this point, with about 45 minutes of daylight left we decided to gun it down the road to try to find red crowned parrots that roost in a neighborhood of McAllen. A quick half spin through the neighborhood and there they were,  doing what these birds do, annoying the shit out of an entire neighborhood. Approximately 130 birds landed in tall tree and squawked nonstop for 10 minutes as the machine gun fire of the cameras managed to capture as much as they could in the fading daylight. Score. It was a great way to end a pretty damn good day in the valley and to erase some of the disappointment of yesterday. Tomorrow we will try to track down some of the birds that we have missed so far and hopefully add to our lists for the 

year.  Hopefully I'll be able to stay awake long enough to upload some pictures tomorrow.