Green Jay? Count It
No sooner had we begun hiking in the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in the southernmost tip of Texas than my guide pointed to the vegetation-thick water in a trailside pond. Least grebes. Mottled ducks. A great kiskadee in an overhanging tree. A sweep of the eye away, white-faced ibis, blue-winged teal.
Two of the five birds I could not recall having knowingly seen before. Life birds, as we birders call them. And so it was to be over three days of hiking in the bird-rich habitats near the Rio Grande along the Mexican border, a veritable cornucopia of bird species unlike anywhere else in the U. S.
Which is why I flew in, in what amounted to a kind of symbolic sync with the many dozens of ducks, wading birds, songbirds and raptors found here.
Mind you, I am not obsessive about my life list, as it is known among birders. I only know for sure that I have seen more than 400 species in North America, of about 900 total, so it is not as if I am trying to see them all. But, having said that, I do like seeing new species and especially the habitat they are found in.
Evan Farese, my guide with Nature Ninja Birding Tours based in McAllen, Texas, is earning a master’s degree in biology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, studying the diet of gray hawks in urban and suburban areas.
Over three days, two with Evan, one birding solo, I saw well over 100 species, some found in the U. S. only in this tiny protrusion of sprawling Texas.
There are two reasons for that, one being that the range of some species that otherwise are found only in Mexico, or even South America, extends just far enough north to reach this southernmost point of Texas. Also, the area around McAllen and Brownsville, where I was birding, is at the juncture of two migratory routes, east-west, and north-south, increasing the number of species that can be seen, if temporarily.
“Ever seen a yellow-headed blackbird?” Evan asked. Nope. So we drove to a vast agricultural field with grain silos behind it. Among hundreds of ubiquitous red-winged blackbirds were a few yellow-headed blackbirds - unmistakable. Count them.
But mostly we birded in classic habitat of the lower Rio Grande Valley, something called Tamaulipan thorn scrub, a dense forest of thorny shrubs, vines, cacti and taller trees, among them cedar elm, which often is hung with Spanish moss.
The forest also includes Texas sabal palm, also known as Rio Grande palmetto, similar to but smaller than the well-known cabbage palm of Florida.
Not only keeping an eye on the birds, I found myself peppering Evan with questions about the identification of trees, wildflowers, shrubs, so many of them, like the birds, found nowhere else in the U. S., or only in the southernmost southwest.
Texas ebony, in the legume family of plants, was an example, with tiny round subleaflets and distinctive 5-inch seed pods. A small tree called Anacua that we came upon was loaded with berries and is a prime food source for many bird species.
One species I wanted to see - the golden-fronted woodpecker - is not rare, but confined in the U. S. to Texas and a smidgeon of Oklahoma. Got a great look at that bird in a honey mesquite, one of the signature trees of the area.
I didn’t see every species I might have, but no complaints. I saw 20 species I had never knowingly seen before, species like clay-colored thrush, plain chachalaca, black-crested titmouse. And for days I got to walk through a kind of habitat I had never before experienced.
On the floor of that habitat - a virtually impenetrable thicket of woody vegetation - was a species that Evan repeatedly heard, every time directing my sight to the direction of the bird, which he knew was an olive sparrow. It is abundant in the area, but hard-to-see. I never got better than a very unsatisfying look. My philosophy is, if you don’t get a decent look at a bird, enough to see its distinguishing features, you can’t count it. I didn’t count it.
But just maybe I’ll pass through the lower Rio Grande Valley again.
An Altamira Oriole in Resaca de la Palma State Park in Brownsville, Texas. This oriole is found in the U.S. only in the southernmost forests of Texas. It hangs around in the tops of trees. Click to enlarge.
Evan Farese, a graduate student studying gray hawks, is a birding guide in the southern tip of Texas with a commanding knowledge of North American birds. He is seen here along the Rio Grande during one of our outings. Click to enlarge.
The green jay is found in the U. S. only in southern Texas. Like its cousins in the jay family, it is gregarious and vocal. Click to enlarge.
Scattered in the Taumaulipan thorn forest are sabal palms, a native species also known as Rio Grande Palmetto.
A least bittern, an otherwise secretive species in its habitat among reeds on South Padre Island, Texas, the longest barrier island in the world, another stop in my visit to the lower Rio Grande Valley. Click to enlarge.
An Inca Dove in Resaca de la Palma State Park in Brownsville, Texas. The dark tips of its feathers give it a scaly appearance. Click to enlarge.