Diario de davems

I discovered something nobody else knew. At least not birders. (snark alert - everybody knows this) Texas, south of San Antonio, is a birding paradise. Lots of Central American species make their way up into the southern tip of Texas. I saw some of them.

Taking a long weekend before Christmas, I flew to San Antonio the evening of the 13th, drove south until I could find a cozy dark sky spot to tuck my rental car into to get some rest - and to see the Geminids meteor shower, which was peak or near peak. There were some good ones, but I had to get some sleep. I had already booked a guided birding tour at the King Ranch for the morning of the 14th. The guide, Jim, drove me and a married couple around the Ranch, where we saw caracara, Sprague's pipit, white-tailed kite, white tailed hawk, least grebe, Couch's kingbird, olive sparrow, green jay, golden-fronted woodpecker, bronzed cowbird, fulvous whistling duck, neotropic cormorant - bam, bam, bam - all these life birds with photos in one morning. That didn't count the numerous other bird species that weren't new. Pretty amazing and hard to keep track of it. I even got sick of seeing vermillion flycatchers. Just kidding.

From there I had to go to Aranasas to find another life bird, whooping cranes. Which I did. A flock of 12 whooping cranes were in one spot waiting for me to find them. Other places visited were Laguna Atosca, Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State Park, and Estero Llano Grande State Park. Highlights were a Texas indigo snake, plain chachalacas, harris' hawks, gray hawk, long-billed thrashers, white-tipped dove, Inca dove, Altamira orioles, great kiskadees, great tailed grackles, green kingfisher, lincoln's sparrow, more green jays, and thousands of black bellied whistling ducks.

This was the best and most vertebrate-intensive bioblast I ever experienced. So far, that is.