Laredo Birding Festival Day 2

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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We drove out to look at some ponds on the ranch…and spotted a familiar bird: a Killdeer.

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There were also Great Kiskadees like we saw several years ago during the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival.

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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.

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There was an American Wigeon just barely within the range of my camera zoom.

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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.

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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.  

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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.

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What a productive day of birding around Laredo!

Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge

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.

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There was a Little Blue Heron fishing in the shallows

And a Great Blue Heron standing on one leg surveying the shore.

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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).

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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.

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A brown pelican flew above – following the shoreline.

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White Ibis wandered through the other shore birds.

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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.

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Side by side – a Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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 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.