Author: Steve

 

Jon has a third-floor view of a yard, a canal, and migrants in the sky.  He sent me his photos.

 

I’ll name all of these birds and Jon will tell me if I got any of them (or how many) wrong.  This one, Common Tern, is tricky.  Common and Forster’s look a lot alike, but Forster’s doesn’t have black on the wingtips, so I’m calling Common.  (That’s a really good bird.)

 

Tri-colored Heron.

 

Black and White Warbler.

 

Mottled Duck.

 

Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

 

Lincoln’s Sparrow.

 

Gray Catbird.

 

Slightly fuzzy Baltimore Oriole and Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

 

 

An awesome Painted Bunting shot.

 

Broad-winged Hawk.

 

White-tailed Hawk.

 

I can’t tell size from photos like this but the pushed-forward looking wings on this one make me guess a little Sharp-shinned Hawk.

 

Sandwich Tern.

 

And why does this Great Egret have a black tip on its beak?  Because it’s a white morph of a Reddish Egret!  Cool.

 

Franklin’s Gull.  Notice how the wing-edges light up from the backlighting of the sun.

 

Jon’s all-day-companion Green Heron.

 

Common Yellowthroat.

 

Common Nighthawk.  If it were a Lesser Nighthawk, the white wing-bar would be farther out toward his wrists.

 

Finishing with evening light.

 

I had evening light too, but my shot came out even fuzzier!

 

Fourteen hours straight for me, and even more for Jon.  We birded together all day, even though we were 150 miles apart, with texts back and forth to keep each other apprised of how we were doing, what remained, and what to watch for.  When we realized we had a combined count of 99 distinct species, we pushed hard to make it to 100.  During the day I missed Loggerhead Shrike, Black Vulture, Black-crested Titmouse, and Lesser Goldfinch; all birds I have seen from my yard recently, but never got on the big day.  There are Inca Doves here in our park, about ten houses away, but I never see or hear them from our deck, so I didn’t get to count them.  In the dusk I watched out front for a late Lesser Nighthawk.  Jon went outside in the dark and listed for a distant Barn Owl scream.  I stood out later and listened hopefully for a Great Horned Owl.  All to no avail.  We pushed as hard as we could but came up one short of a hundred (The Monk in me always wants even numbers.)

 

We’ll call one more bird, a hundred birds, a milestone and motivation for next year.

 

 

The venue.

 

Couch’s Kingbird.

 

Ladder-backed Woodpecker.

 

Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

 

 

A Red-winged Blackbird

 

Stealing a drop of water.

 

And a pool party.

 

Eurasian Collared-dove.

 

Great Kiskadee.

 

 

 

Painted Bunting.

 

A Golden-fronted Woodpecker.

 

Absconding with the Green Jay’s peanut!

 

A bathing Red-winged Blackbird.

 

 

White-winged Dove.

 

A bathing Grackle.  (It was a hot day.  The birdbath was popular.)

 

 

 

Curve-billed Thrasher.

 

A crazed Red-winged Blackbird.

 

 

 

And dinner delivered on the deck.

 

I never had to look away.

 

 

About this time.  The Big Day.  That’s the day Jon and I go out to see how many species of birds we can identify in 24 hours.  Jon maps out the trip and we cover four hundred miles, plus or minus, hitting all the best spots, starting at midnight.

 

Well, this year is different.  We’re sheltering in place.  Social distancing.  So we decided this year’s big day challenge would be for each of us to sit on their own deck or balcony and see how many species we could each spot from our own house.  Two yard-counts.  Between the two of us, we wondered if we could see a total of 50 unique species of birds, without either of us leaving home.  A Lockdown Big Day.

 

Jon is in Corpus Christi, north of here, on the coast in the migration zone.  I’m down south in The Rio Grande Valley, the more sub-tropical zone.  There are birds in common between the two places, like blackbirds and doves, but there are also lots of birds that are unique to one place or the other.  Jon started at midnight, listening to migrants flying overhead in the dark and identifying what he could by their flight calls.  I don’t have the night migrants here, so I started at 6am, on the deck, listening in the dark to the pauraque’s call.

 

How did we do?  We blew away our best guess of 50 species in a day.  Judy and I found 39 from our yard.  Judy was there with me most of the day.  Jon found 81!  He had a great migrant day.  Together, the total of 120 birds seen, winnowed down to 99 after we eliminated duplicates.  99 birds.  Never would have guessed we could get that many.

 

A fun day today.  We’ll call it a tradition preserved.  Glad we did it.

 

Photos to follow tomorrow.

 

 

Circa 1980.

 

Judy, dad Earl, brother Gary Earl, sister Donna, mom Helen, and sister Sue.

 

 

We’ve seen a lot of bird species in the U.S.; not all of them, but a lot.  We’ve seen most of the birds that can be seen here in South Texas, and especially all the birds that can be seen from our deck.  I like that we have been able to record our sightings in eBird and call up maps of all the different places we’ve been and found birds.

 

What can we do now for something different?  We’re still on lockdown.  Our new challenge:  create an alter-ego on eBird; a virtual birder identity.  Then we can go find and identify other birds all over the world.  No, we’re not flying out of country.  I’ll sit at the computer screen googling “Live bird cams”.  I can sit in South Texas monitoring other sites and, in real time, record birds in other places.

 

Here are some birds in Panama:

 

Gray-cowled Wood-rail.

 

Bananaquit.

 

Blue-gray Tanager.

 

Chestnut-headed Orependola (the one on the left).

 

Gray-headed Chachalaca.

 

Collared Aricari.

 

World birding while sheltering in place.