Tropical Birding tours

Sunday we went on three different free guided tours with Tropical Birding. In this area, these people work for Houston Audubon. This year the guides were from England, South Africa, Ecuador, Australia, and Vermont. I liked Charlie—an English guy living in South Africa—best. Today's tours were the last of the group's tours on High Island. Tomorrow they are following the warblers north to Ohio's Magee Marsh, where, from what they told us, there were so many birders that one could not get onto the boardwalk, and birders had to tweet their sightings to other birders. Did not sound  like fun to me. Their quitting the area and moving north also told us that we were perhaps a week too late for High Island's high-season fallout. Also, it was hot and the skeeters were fierce!

Male Indigo Bunting in bottlebrush c Deb Hirt

Our 8:30 tour was in Boy Scout Woods, where we spent most of the time out of the woods finding birds (including a leucistic bunting) at the bottlebrush bushes across the road. The bunting was white except for the back of its head and back which were light, reddish brown. There were not too many species in attendance: Baltimore and Orchard Oriole males and females, the ubiquitous Grey Catbird, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Indigo Buntings, and a Red-eyed Vireo. 

My group walked back trails and found a Barn Owl box near a meadow. Charlie told me that the Barn Owl flew down 5th Street past the entrance of BSW and the house where Tropical Birding staff are housed every evening at dusk. Deb and I planned to keep watch one evening, but never got to it.

Our second Tropical Birding tour was of Rollover Pass State Park and a flooded field west of it where we endured a brief shower but saw many good shorebirds including Common, Foresters, Black, Royal, Least, and Sandwich Terns; American Oystercatchers; Marbled Godwits; Whimbrels; Dowitchers; Yellowlegs, Willits, Sanderlings; Snowy, Black-bellied, and American Golden Plovers; Bairds, Semipalmated, and Least Sandpipers; and many Brown Pelicans and Laughing Gulls among others. 

Our four o’clock Tropical Birding tour was of Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary. Here the passerine birding was still slim to nothing, so we left the group and again visited Heron Island. Heron Island is an excellent place for photography, and Deb clicked off several hundred shots.

Each bird family had a story. 1) Four nearly grown chicks of one pair would gang the feeding parent, scissor the parent's bill, and pull the adult every which way.  I have included a internet photo here of Tricolored Herons feeding their young in this manner. 2) One of the few Snowies that had found a quiet place to nest, worked meticulously on her nest. The male would bring a twig and the two would work diligently at placing the stick and building up the sides of the nest. In between nest building, the female carefully turned her greenish blue eggs. 3) One nest high on a bare snag belonged to a pair of neotropic cormorants. The male returned often with food. and the two were very attentive of their three

Neotropic Cormorants (Internet)

chicks. 4) Few spoonbills had nests. Those that did were still brooding their eggs. The spoonbills and the snowies were in near constant battle for territory. 5) There was only one pair of Tricolored Herons on the side of the island that we could observe. These two received our pity. They worked for days trying to build a nest in some flimsy willow branches. Each time the male arrived with a stick, the two would try to work it into a platform, but it usually fell to the ground. Five days later--on Friday, our last full day of birding--the pair had made little headway. I had the urge to help them!

Tri-colored Heron c Jason Temple

Our observations and reading tell us that all birds participate in a "stick hunt." The Tricolored Herons hover over the pond retrieving sticks from the water. Great Egrets search the trails, and all species steal sticks from their neighbor's nests. Deb could get no pix of this couple so the beautiful photo of a Tri-colored Heron in breeding plumage left is from the Internet.

This evening we decided that we wanted a hot meal, so went across the courtyard to the motel’s grill and accidentally “crashed” a going away party for the kitchen help—and so got our meal free of charge. We were included as part of the gang and were introduced all around . . . even had our photos taken. The staff had made black bean soup, chili rellenos pie and casserole, chips, guacamole and salsa, and even dessert.

I think I was asleep by 8, but I woke at 11 in a puddle. The AC had shut down. There was a storm and all the power was off at the motel. The room was a sweatbox. I opened the window and sweated it out, playing games on the cell phone and tossing and turning until 1:38 AM when the electricity was restored and the AC came back on. Whew!