Scarlet Tanager Day

Wednesday, April 29

Scarlet Tanager c Deb Hirt

This morning we decided to bird Texas Ornithological Society’s Hook’s Woods off 1st Street, only a few blocks from our motel on 6th Street. I had seen a Great Horned Owl and its owlets here in 2011, but there was no sign of it in 2015. We discovered that Hook's Woods was now off bounds unless one was a member of the TOS and paid a fee, so we birded outside it and along 1st Street with much success.On 1st Street, we spotted some new species: Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Northern Parula, Ovenbird, Warbling Vireo, and both the Great-crested and Brown-crested Flycatcher.

The Scarlet Tanagers arrived today after their flight across the Gulf. The first big fallout since we've been here. The stormy weather caused their arrival. They popped up everywhere, first at 1st Street, then at Boy Scout Woods, and later at Smith Oaks.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Susan's 2011 photo

After spending the morning at 1st Street, we scurried back to the motel and had lunch. Then we struck out again for a couple of other new birding locales: Eubanks Woods Bird Sanctuary near Smith Woods, and the Texas Ornithological Society’s Mary Edna Crawford Sanctuary. Neither of these locales was well kept up or had any birds or birders. So . . . we decided to go back to Rollover Pass State Park so that Deb could photograph an oystercatcher . . . but alas, there were no oystercatchers at the Pass. Tons of brown pelicans, dunlins, willets, stilts, dowitchers, and avocets, though. 

The avocets were behaving like I’d never seen them behave before. Groups of 20 to 25 were walking/floating in the shallow water and turning tails up like dabbling ducks. (I took photos of this behavior but inadvertently erased them from my camera, so the photo below from the Internet is similar to the groups of American Avocets I saw in the low-water tidal flats at Rollover Pass SP.)

American Avocets bottoms up feeding; Internet photo

Clapper Rail c Deb Hirt

After Rollover we drove Yacht Basin road and again encountered a Clapper Rail beside the road. It crossed the road and disappeared into the tall grass near some marsh water. The tidal marshes are so high that the rails are being driven out onto the roads. 

There was nothing much else seaside, so we decided to head back to Smith Oaks for the passerines, which very well may be winging it farther north in tomorrow's predicted fine weather. Very little of note at Smith Oaks. Nothing at Hook’s Woods, nothing at the veggie stand—that wasn’t sold in $7.99 baskets. We were drooling for tomatoes for tomato-and-mayo sandwiches but could not use so many. So there’s nothing for it but to write up this entry and veg out.