Lots of birds in the Zooming slide show this month – from the Whooping Crane Festival in south Texas as well as Josey Ranch (Carrollton TX), the Springfield Botanical Gardens (Springfield MO) and Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge (near Sherman TX). I find myself picking images that show bird behavior rather than portraits.
There are spring flowers in this collection as well…more of those coming in April!
Enjoy the March 2024 slide show!
Our last field trip at the Whooping Crane Festival began with another early morning because we had to drive to the place (taking the ferry to cross from the barrier island). We arrived just a few minutes before the gate at Fennessey Ranch was opened for our tour group (not the first in line but not the last either).
I took a few pictures in the soft morning light: prickly pear cactus with brambles and a bird house, the layered reflected color of sunrise with the moon, and then some mourning doves in a nearby tree just as the sunlight hit them.
We waited a bit for the trailers with haybales for seats to arrive; we would tour the ranch in the trailers pulled by a pickup truck.
A few minutes into the tour there was a song sparrow in sunlight surround by mossy limbs.
I found photography from the trailer even more difficult than the bus at King Ranch. We did see wild turkeys and a bobcat…..but I wasn’t able to get a good line of sight with my camera. The bobcat was very hard to spot until it moved!
I did get some good shots of two crested caracaras high in a tree. Were they a mating pair? The birds tend to be solitary except with their mate and offspring. Since I was almost under the birds…I took a picture of the talons.
There were a few wildflowers blooming.
One of the places we stopped included some sandhill cranes in the distance. There were feral hogs near them, and the birds flew off when the hogs got too close. The ranch does sponsor hunts of feral hogs…hopefully lowering their numbers.
The ranch has nine linear miles of river frontage on the Mission River. We stopped at a place where there is a blind and feeder. Only cardinals came to the feeder the morning we were there.
I opted to photograph more wildflowers and a post emerging from the water with what looks like barnacles (I forgot to ask if the river was tidal).
I also looked at the bank on the opposite side…lots of vegetation to the river’s edge in most places although there were places where cattle probably came down to the river. The bank on our side of the river was much steeper. It would be interesting to see the flood model for the ranch.
The Fennessy ranch field trip was a good winding down for our festival attendance. I learned that hayrides on trailers behind pickups over bumpy roads are hard on my back…probably won’t do that again. We headed toward home. I was looking forward to Czech pastries in West, Texas on the second morning of the road trip back to Missouri.
The second day of the Whooping Crane Festival started early; we got on a bus to head to the King Ranch at 6 AM! The King Ranch Visitor Center was a little over an hour from Port Aransas (and we did not take the ferry). By the time we got there the sun was up.
We had a ‘rest stop’ at the visitor center…plenty of time to look around for birds. There were curve-billed thrashers on some prickly pear cactus.
A rufous hummingbird was not bothered by the sudden influx of people. It stayed in place long enough for everyone to get a good look.
Mockingbirds were around too….they are the state bird of Texas.
A golden-fronted woodpecker was spotted. It moved around a lot but there always seemed to be twigs between me and the bird!
Then we did most of our viewing from the bus for a bit since the ranch is so big…and the trip has a limited amount of time. I managed some OK pictures through the windows: a roadrunner and crested caracara….
Longhorn cattle.
We made a stop and saw a group of sandhill cranes in the distance.
Back on the bus…we had been seeing American kestrels all morning and I eventually managed to get an image of one through the bus window…good enough for id but focus not sharp enough.
A group of female wild turkeys moved away as our bus got closer. Later we would see a group of male turkeys.
Another raptor through the bus window…a red-shouldered hawk.
The bus stopped at a water impoundment…and we all got an excellent view of an American Bittern.
There was a feeding station for birds at the next stop. We got good looks at red-winged blackbirds and gold-fronted woodpeckers…
And green jays!
There was a least grebe in the water a little ways down the road.
A snowy egret had caught breakfast.
Green-winged teal, pyrrhuloxia, and American Coots were also enjoying the water.
Alligator!
A Great Egret took off as the alligator headed toward it.
In the distance….Cinnamon teal with blue winged teal and a black necked stilt.
A great kiskadee made an appearance.
A black-crowned night heron is often hard to see in heavy vegetation. I always feel lucky when I finally see it and luckier still to get a photograph.
And the male turkeys were the last birds we saw as we headed back to the visitor center.
My husband and I both enjoyed this field trip…saw a lot of birds that we didn’t see during any of other field trips. It was interesting to learn a little history of the King Ranch as well. We had enough time for a quick lunch before showing up for trip out on a boat in the afternoon.
The last day of birding at the Laredo Birding Festival started with the van leaving the hotel at 6 AM! It was the earliest start of the festival, but we were accustomed to it by that time. The front of the hotel was alive with activity in the darkness.
Our destination was the La Perla Ranch, prized for its habitat and plentiful birds that thrive near its sensational water features. They had the name of the place on the chairs at the hunting lodge!
The first bird of the morning was a Great Horned Owl on an antennae. What a great start to the day of birding! The bird seemed to be very scrutinizing our van breaking the calm of the morning.
The sun was not quite above the horizon yet…I got a silhouette of a Crested Caracara through a fence. The bird has a very distinctive profile.
And then we arrived at the hunting lodge the ranch provides…the sun came up. I liked the ‘barn’ birdfeeder in one of the trees.
A Turkey Vulture sat hunched in the top of a palm. Others were soring overhead. Some wild turkey moved rapidly our of my camera range…I missed photographing them entirely.
There were quite a few Meadowlarks although almost out of range of my camera’s zoom. This is an area where the Eastern and Western Meadowlarks overlap. They have such minor distinguishing characteristics; I’m just saying the bird in this photo is a Meadowlark.
We did some walking around ponds. Most of the birds were far away. Pied-billed Grebe are easy to distinguish from the Least Grebe (we saw both). My photo is of a Pied-Billed Grebe because it has dark eyes.
Just barely within the range of my zoom: a Green Kingfisher. The area south Texas along the Rio Grand is the only place to see this bird in the US. This one is female.
Cinnamon Teal were also on the ponds. The coloring of the male is indeed ‘cinnamon’!
I didn’t get a great picture – but was thrilled to see and get a photo of Peregrine Falcon. All the other ones I’ve photographed were on man-made structures (like bridges).
Sometimes I just paused and looked around at the ranch – glistening water surrounded by dry areas… wildflowers. It was a wonderful place to spend the day.
A Belted Kingfisher (female) surveyed the water from a dock on one of the ponds. We had seen a Ringed Kingfisher earlier on one of the larger ponds but I didn’t get a picture; I was surprised at how large it was.
How many birds can you identify in this picture?
The largest white bird is a Great Egret The smaller ones are Snowy Egrets. There are two types of cormorants: the Neotropic Cormorants are the smaller and darker ones; the larger and lighter ones are the Double-crested Cormorants. In the foreground are Ruddy Ducks with their tails pointing upward.
For the last picture of the day – a parade of Egrets (the Great Egret bringing up the rear)!
We were up at 4:30 AM to prepare for our day of birding at the Laredo Birding Festival. After a delicious breakfast buffet we boarded the van shortly after 6:15 AM and headed to the Yugo Ranch - currently owned and operated by 6th generation descendants of Ygnacio Benavides, who live by the same conservationist philosophy as their ancestor – where we would spend the morning and early afternoon. We parked the van near the ranch buildings, and everyone bundled up since it was a cold morning.
There was a Texas Ebony tree near where we parked. There were a lot of seed pods on the ground around the tree. The birds and other wildlife had already finished off the seeds.
All during the morning we saw Vermilion Flycatchers – the bright red attracting attention.
Crested Caracara flew overhead and there were a pair in a tree just barely within the range of my camera.
When we made a loop back to the ranch buildings, I managed to photograph a wren which was easily identified later from the picture as a Cactus Wren. It seemed to be very interested in the chimney.
We drove out to look at some ponds on the ranch…and spotted a familiar bird: a Killdeer.
There were also Great Kiskadees like we saw several years ago during the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival.
There were groups of Northern Cardinals…a small flock. In our area of Maryland they are usually only seen in pairs or males contesting turf…the small flock was new to us.
The high point of the morning was a Great Horned Owl. It was surveying the area from a tree growing on an island of the pond. It sometimes looked our way….decided our group was no threat at all.
Looking closely at the picture I took of a cormorant – I realize that it is a Neotropic Cormorant (rather than a Double-crested Cormorant) because the eye is surrounded by feathers rather than a bare patch of skin.
There was an American Wigeon just barely within the range of my camera zoom.
As we headed down the road in our van, there was a Curve-billed Thrasher in the road. I was ideally positioned to take pictures through the windshield of the van!
Also on along the road, a Pyrrhuloxia was spotted. For this picture I had to contort a bit to get the picture through a side window.
We had been seeing Harris’s Hawks and I finally got a picture of two that were near each other on a telephone pole. This species hunts as a team!
The next stop was Ranchito Road Lagoons. The high point of the afternoon happened at this location: American White Pelicans feeding in unison. I had not seen this behavior before. It was like a ballet and they did it for the whole time we were at the location.
A Black-necked Stilt and
Lesser Yellowlegs were feeding in the shallows.
On the way back to hotel we stopped at the Laredo Landfill. It was very windy (dust and some trash flying everywhere) so we didn’t stay long. There were quite a few Cattle Egrets huddled together near the entrance. And lots of Chihuahuan Ravens that were closer to where we stopped. I later wished that I had walked over to get a picture of the Cattle Egrets since we didn’t see them in any other festival location.
What a productive day of birding around Laredo!
Continuing the third day of the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival….this is the last post about our field trip into Central Florida. The high point of the day was seeing a Whooping Crane. This is one that started out life at the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge (program now ended) and doesn’t migrate. It generally stays on a cattle ranch and enjoys cattle feed! We stopped at the ranch’s entrance, so the pictures are a little blurry with the max zoom required to take the picture. There were some sandhill cranes around as well and it was obvious this bird was different – bigger and very white. Our guides told us that the dwindling numbers of whooping cranes in Florida will be captured and relocated to join a non-migrating group in Louisiana.
Even though it was chilly while we were in Florida, it was still much warmer than in Maryland. There were flowers blooming and going to seed.
The deciduous trees had lost their leaves. The guides pointed out bald cypress domes…the tallest and oldest trees being in the center.
I was pleasantly surprised by the paint job in the rest room of the place we stopped for our picnic lunch. Very artfully done!
A cow escaped the pasture and was in tall grass heaven near one lake. Fortunately, the grass held the cow’s attention and it didn’t wonder up into the picnic area.
We stopped when we spotted a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher on a fence post. It moved to the fence wire and I got another angle.
We were just getting ready to retreat to the bus when a Crested Caracara flew in with some prey followed by an entourage of Turkey Vultures. The big lenses and binoculars were trained on the caracara trying to figure out what the prey was. Maybe a snake.
They stayed around long enough for me to take a portraits. The crest of the caracara reminds me of a bad toupee.
The vultures kept a respectful distance but would move in as soon as the caracara left.
We made a last stop before the end of the day at the Helen and Allan Cruikshank Sanctuary where we had spent a very rainy morning a few days before. This time we saw an Osprey before the scrub jays.
But the Florida Scrub Jays showed up soon enough. One alighted on the hand of one of our guides – probably thinking there would be a peanut for it…no peanut appeared.
Another bird stomped on the hat of our other guide. The bird obligingly turned around for him to get a selfie. That was the last event of the day. Note that all the jays we saw were banded…sometimes multiple times.
Our day in the field (5AM to 4PM) was probably the best of the festival…so much seen in a relatively short period of time!
Our third day at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival did not start out well: our bus has a mechanical problem and our departure was delayed by about 3 hours. Fortunately, the replan included a lengthening of the trip by three hours and provisions (picnic lunch). On the plus side – we avoided some rain showers that moved through while we were waiting; on the negative side – we could have slept later (getting up at 4 AM is common at birding festivals!). Our destination was the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. We didn’t seen any ocelots that the refuge is trying to protect…but we did see plenty of birds. The days was very cloudy and misty – not good for photographing. I picked a few that were good enjoy enough for identification.
There were snow geese coming and going. I liked this line because of the different morphs visible.
There was a Little Blue Heron fishing in the shallows
And a Great Blue Heron standing on one leg surveying the shore.
A group of Forster’s terns, with the black feathers around and back from their eyes) were grouped along the shore (looks like the birds behind them were snoozing).
The Forster’s tern is in the middle of this image. The largest bird is a Caspian Tern and the one in front is a Royal Tern. The Royal Terns I’d seen in Maryland always looked like they were wearing a black cap but that is only during the breeding season…not this time of year in South Texas.
A brown pelican flew above – following the shoreline.
White Ibis wandered through the other shore birds.
The Crested Caracara were new to me. Since the ones I saw on the field trip were a little far away – I took a picture of a captive bird as the Expo.
I took a close up of a prickly pear tuna (fruit)…note the spines.
Side by side – a Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs.
We were all on the bus when a male Northern Harrier swooped down into the field beside the road and hovered over prey. I did pretty well taking this series through the bus window since there was no time to do anything better.
There is a platform where aplomado falcons are nesting. This is an exciting recovery story since this bird was gone from the area for years and has only recently been reintroduced and is breeding again in south Texas. I took a picture of the captive falcon at the Expo just as I had the Crested Caracara.
We stopped at the visitor’s center and walked around the cards there. Red-winged blackbirds are all over North America!
The white winged doves are summer birds in south Texas according to allaboutbirds but there were still a lot of them around in mid-November; I wonder if they are really year round in the Rio Grande Valley.
It was a longer day that we’d anticipated but better than we thought might happen in the hour or so after we initially learned of the bus problem. In the end we decided that the Laguna Atascosa trip was well worth it.
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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