Birding TEXAS
A host of great birds can be enjoyed in this US state, also home to the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival, which aims to run again in 2021
“Well I’ve never seen one doing that before,” exclaimed Joan Garland, smiling broadly as the sleet fell upon her bobble-hat, here in the supposedly balmy Deep South.
We were watching Whooping Cranes at their only wild wintering site in the world, the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, near Corpus Christi in South Texas. Two tall, gleaming-white adult cranes foraged protectively around their auburn-stained youngster. Prompted by a sudden distant challenging call, the adults launched into a bugling duet. It was a spot of crane social distancing.
Then the youngster lifted its head and made its own attempt to defend the family space. It was nothing but a squeaky apology for a bugle – or a whoop, for that matter - but the youngster’s spirit sent a wave of delight across the top deck of our vessel, the Skimmer, and prompted Joan’s surprise.
“Looks like the next generation’s getting ahead of itself,” muttered Tommy Moore, the captain of our Crane Cruise. “It bodes well for the future.”
For a bird that once numbered 15 individuals, it is something of a miracle that we could still contemplate a future for what was, in the 1930s, perhaps the rarest bird in the world. For decades, North America’s tallest teetered on the edge; a single incident here in Texas or at the breeding grounds in Canada, 4,000km (2,500 miles) to the north, could have tipped it into oblivion.
The birds we could see from our small boat in Aransas Bay were the beneficiaries of an achingly slow recovery; even by 1993, there were still only 136 individuals in the wild population. Conservationists were so worried that they began captive breeding and reintroduction schemes. Hundreds of young cranes have been reared by keepers dressed in crane costumes.
An attempt to teach juvenile cranes to fly from Wisconsin to new wintering areas in
Florida enlisted the use of micro-lite aircraft, with a suitably dressed pilot, for the youngsters to follow and learn the route. It is a celebrated story of trying to bring a bird back from the brink. There are now two non-migratory flocks, in Florida and Louisiana, and the wild population has risen to about 500.
The estimable Joan Garland, my guide, had witnessed much of this at her previous role in media for the International Crane Foundation, which included giving illustrated talks to schools and other gatherings. I was in exalted company, and for the first time in my life, I had been shown a new bird by somebody who used to dress up as one.
The sheer excitement of seeing these elegant, brilliant white, bounteously
charismatic birds is reason enough to visit South Texas without any other treats. But while the Cranes might be the main course, here close to the Mexico border there is a fantastic range of Tex-Mex tapas, too. Indeed, hereabouts is arguably the richest birding in the entire USA.
Range of birds
A couple of hours to the south of Corpus Christi lies the celebrated Rio Grande Valley, a place which calls Siren-like to every birder hankering after the fading fall. Not only does the valley form the border with Mexico, it also provides a little corner of what might be described as Mexico on American soil. Here the succulent-rich desert scrub, lush riverine forest, and palm groves are home to a range of birds that reach their northern limit, here in the extreme south of mainland USA.
Birds such as Olive Sparrow and Hooded Oriole creep into the American Birding Association recording area, available here and here alone for keen listers. This border area holds a dozen or more species that are very difficult or impossible to see anywhere else, so every late autumn, thousands of birders head south in any way they can, especially when they can link up with the Rio Grande Valley Bird Festival. Among the choicest birds are Aplomado Falcon, Zone-tailed Hawk, Green Jay, Crested Caracara, Great Kiskadee, Black-crested Titmouse and Plain Chachalaca.
“My mother used to call me a little Chachalaca,” exclaimed Nydia TapiaGonzales, my delightfully warm and voluble guide, herself of Mexican origin. “It was only many years later when I started birding, I finally realised what she meant. The chachalacas call very loudly and never stop!”
We were at Hugh Ramsey Nature Park, in Harlingen, deep in the Valley. Down here they believe in making birding as easy as possible, so Nydia and I simply sat close to a bird feeding station and watched the comings and goings.
A group of admittedly ear-splitting chachalacas, which are a little like pheasants, fed around the feeders, every so often flushed by a group of Collared Peccaries, which are wild pigs. The trays held a group of Green Jays, a bird straight out of the gaudy tropical bird catalogue. Buff-bellied Hummingbirds whizzed to and fro, while Long-billed Thrashers, which are relatives of Mockingbirds, scratched the dry ground, digging with their eponymous curved bills. These were all dream birds for the rest of the country.
Hugh Ramsey Nature Park is one of a group of Rio Grande Valley reserves known as ‘World Birding Centers’ – think World Series Baseball, in which ‘the world’ is conveniently shrunk into a North American package. These reserves occupy green spaces and corridors in an area that is predominantly urban sprawl, oases of astonishing biodiversity among fast-food restaurants, highways and homes. The Valley is an unplanned mishmash, most definitely not a place you go for scenery. Yet the birding in simply incredible.
Rarities and fun!
The next day, Nydia took me to a selection of World Birding Centers and other open spaces. We set a pattern that continued throughout my stay in the Valley – seeing 100-plus species every day. We began at Estero Llano Grande State Park in the town of Westlaco, where we encountered several rarities, not least a true American with a miraculously British sense of humour.
John Yoakum’s sense of fun was as sharp as his identification skills. He picked out a snoozing Pauraque, a type of nightjar mainly found in Central and South
America, after ribbing us mercilessly for at least 10 minutes as we tried in vain to find it among the dry leaves and fallen branches. Other highlights were 20 gorgeous, elegant American Avocets, Least Grebe, Eastern Screech Owl and superb close-up views of White Ibises and Yellow-crowned Night-Herons. Curiously, we also saw the largest and smallest butterflies in the United States, the Great Swallowtail and the Western Pygmy-Blue.
To the west, Edinburg Scenic Wetlands is the classic urban park, with a couple of lakes, scrub and open woodland – except, being in south Texas, it has a butterfly list of more than 100 species. Here, again, a selection of ducks, shorebirds, both Double-crested and Neotropic Cormorants, and various herons, including the very smart Tricolored Heron, adorned the lakes and shores. We also had a great view of Audubon’s Oriole here, another Valley speciality, and saw both Golden-fronted and Ladder-backed Woodpeckers.
To the east of the conurbations, the Rio Grande river itself disgorges into a small sandy delta. From here Padre Island, a sliver of land 5km at its widest protects the next 181km (113 miles). The south of the island is heavily built up as a major beach destination, with shiny buildings, flashy cars, boats and endless sands. It is also a stupendous migrant trap, birds filtering down the fillet of offshore land to the very southern tip. During the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in November, a Birdfairlike event that majors on field trips, birders mix it with beachgoers, winter Texans and business-people.
Nydia took me to a Lilliputian reserve, the inappropriately grandly named South Padre Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary. It was essentially Fair Isle in a suburban block, and in a few minutes we found eight species of American warblers, as well as good stuff such as Summer Tanager and Indigo Bunting (whose young have been proven to learn the rotation of the stars and use it as a cue in migration.)
A Ruby-crowned Kinglet approached birders so close that you wondered whether it was thinking of asking for directions. Close by, the South Padre Island Birding Nature Centre is another small patch of land surrounded by the throb of humanity. Here you can wander along boardwalks a couple of metres above plastic-looking American Alligators, and try to appreciate the Mottled Ducks, which look too much like female Mallards to inspire much excitement, despite being rarities. You can admire a fabulous range of herons, terns and shorebirds. The migrants were everywhere here, too. It has to be a good day when there’s a Hermit Thrush in the car park.
Nydia’s passion for local history persuaded me to go to the Palo Alto Battlefield Memorial Park, near Brownsville, where we managed to see Northern Bobwhite, White-tailed and Harris’s Hawks, and Olive Sparrow. This dry, scrubby tract of bushland is the scene of a day-long battle between the armies of Mexico and the United States, on 8 May, 1846.
For much of the previous decade, Texas had been a separate country (it is the Lone Star State, after all) and its recent accession to the US had provoked its southern neighbour, which still controlled much of the California and the Deep South. The Mexicans lost and never recovered; by 1848 they had lost about a million square miles of territory, and the country halved in size. Ouch!
Outside the Visitor Centre, I noticed a particularly fine butterfly (a Guava Skipper) perched on a bloom in the flowerbed. After going up close to check, and summoning Nydia over, I happened to look down and notice a huge snake half a metre from my foot.
“Whoo-aa!” squealed Nydia. “A rattler! Move away, away!”
We inched out of range; the 3m long Western Diamondback Rattlesnake stared contemptuously.
Wiping her brow, Nydia said: “I told you that if you found out about all these wonderful birds we had here in the Valley, I would have to kill you.”
It was a joke, but I still thought: “At least they let me see the Whooping Cranes first.”
MORE INFORMATION
Dominic Couzens travelled to Texas courtesy of Texas Birding texasbirding.org/
The Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival is cancelled for 2020, but is scheduled for 10-14 November 2021
HERE YOU CAN WANDER ALONG BOARDWALKS A COUPLE OF METRES ABOVE PLASTIC-LOOKING AMERICAN ALLIGATORS...