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The great ferruginous hawk hunt

 That’s an unusual bird here, the ferruginous hawk, so we drove out to some agricultural land north of us to where it has been reported.  (By “we drove”, of course, I mean that Judy drove while I hung my head out the window watching for birds.  Think Pet Detective, or taking Henry for a car ride.)  There is a prairie falcon out there too; another great bird for here; not uncommon out on the Eastern Colorado prairie, but a big deal here.  With two really conspicuous birds to watch for in only one sky, how hard could it be? We started off with a long-billed curlew in a yard. We moved on to a red-tailed hawk on a utility pole. Annie and Henry had a chance to get out of the car and stretch their legs.  Annie still has her puppy moments. We saw northern harriers galore. …coursing low over fields in search of munchies. We saw a peregrine falcon atop a distant pole eating a mouse. There were horned larks. There was a really distinctive red-tailed hawkNot so much for the red tail, but for the wing pattern. And a vesper sparrow. Perched and posed. Want to guess how many ferruginous hawks and prairie falcons we saw? Not so many.   No problem.  There is something enchanting about the vast emptiness of the Colorado Eastern Plains …and the vast agricultural land of South Texas. We’ll be back.  
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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!