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Busted!

 I’m told this gray hawk, that I identified as a Gray Hawk, standing in a tree, Is actually the backside of an adult Cooper’s Hawk like this (not my picture) standing in bad light. My bad. 
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The Stakeout

 Most birds we get to see on our own terms; we go out and look for them whenever we feel like it.  Some birds require an appointment. The hook-billed kite is one of those birds that operates on a schedule.  If you want to see a hook billed kite, you have to fit your time to their schedule; but they don’t tell you exactly what that schedule is.  They change it a little each day.  You just have to guess. We got word that a hook-billed kite leaves the forest at Bentsen Rio Grande State Park each morning and flies over the levee headed north.  That’s the viewing point for us; the levee.  He had been seen at 9:30 yesterday morning.  We didn’t want to miss him this morning, so we showed up at the state park at 8:00am prepared for a two-hour (or more) stakeout waiting for the fly-by.  We arrived on the levee at 8:04.  The kite flew over at 8:09, gave us a great view circling right overhead, then glided off to the north out of site.  That was it; the end of the stakeout.  A five-minute stakeout. The kite is not a hunter that pounces on its prey from the sky.  It spends the day climbing around in trees like a parrot, finding little tree snails and eating them. We’ve done well with rare raptors the last couple days.  Judy picked out a zone-tailed hawk soaring high with a kettle of turkey vultures and black vultures riding the morning thermals.It’s so high we can’t see the markings on his tail but have to identify him by size and silhouette. Gray hawk.  We’ve been seeing brown juveniles.  Then from the car, Judy spotted an adult standing in a tree within 50 feet of us. Today, we got the hook-billed kite.   This birding thing is so easy… 
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Remember that gray-crowned yellowthroat

 ….we were looking for before we went to Houston?  It is still being reported down here in the Valley.  We missed it several times before, so we got serious and showed up right about dawn to find it.  That worked perfectly.  We walked right up on it, close to the trail, and photographed it. Here is what common yellowthroats look like.These are the ones we see almost every day.  They’re always near water. Here is the gray-crowned yellowthroat.He likes it drier.  He likes it in South America. Way cool.  Lifer! 
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The Falcon

 We reported that Aplomado Falcon up by Houston on eBird.  We heard back the very next day from the moderator of bird sightings in that area wanting to know exactly where it was so other people could go see it.  That’s a very rare bird for that area and Judy and I just stumbled onto it.  We did what we could to help them find it and so far several other people have been able to locate it and record their sightings.  That’s fun. Here is the original picture. Here is the bird blown up a little. Can’t see his facial features as well as we could with binoculars though.  If you zoom in with your viewer you can get a good look at him. I know.  I’ll send it as an attachment too.