Bulletin #89 – Misc upper Texas coast birds

David McDonald Photography
Friendswood Texas
August 21, 2009

Bulletin #89 – Misc upper Texas coast birds

Hello friends,


This summer has been exceptionally hot and dry in Houston. In fact most of Texas is an a moderate to extreme drought. I have not been out in the field as it is just too hot. However, there have been a few interesting birds in the area and some at my house.

Two birds in the area are quite rare here. The first was an American Flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber). This bird was found in Freeport Texas in mid May and was only there for 24 hours. Fortunately I got there in time for a photo.

The other unusual bird was a Brant goose (Branta bernicla). This dark goose is usually only found in cooler climates, yet there was one found in Brazoria NWR at the end of July.

One result of the drought was that many of the small ponds, ditches etc have dried up, so feeding spots for waders have decreased. Normally, I have a few Yellow-crowned Night-Herons (Nyctanassa violacea) in the neighborhood. They catch crawfish, tadpoles etc in these small watery areas. Because of the drought, I had 1-2 every evening in June and July just walking around on the my lawn. Occasionally, they picked up something in the grass.

Because, this is also crawfish season here, the stores had plenty of the live crustaceans in stock (people here eat them for those of you not from LA or TX). So I decided to try and experiment to see if they would eat them. I bought some and placed them along a path in the grass when the birds were present. The first evening, they just looked at them, but the next night one of the birds ate them. Subsequently, every night he would show up along the path between 6:30 and 7:30pm. I would put out some crawfish and he would eat them. He was obviously feeding young in the nest as he would fly away with 4 in his crop and return 15 minutes later. One night, he ate 16 of them in 4 separate trips. By the third week he was quite tame and I could walk to within 6 feet of him, as I set out his meal.

The method of eating the crawfish was always the same. He would break off the claws, then crush the exoskeleton from tail to head and then swallow it whole. On one occasion, a particularly large crawfish wouldn't go down. He was forced to regurgitate it. He didn't attempt to pull it apart and eat it piecemeal like a hawk would do. Instead he crushed it again and swallowed it whole. The second time it went down OK.

I was hoping to continue feeding him all summer and that he would bring the babies to feed once they fledged. Alas, the stores stopped stocking crawfish after mid-July. Also, fortunately, we started having some rain, so the natural sources of their food returned.

I had never read of anyone feeding these herons in this manner, so my experiment was a success.

Here are a couple of photos. The whole series I posted to Texbirds can be seen here. Click 'next' 8 times to see all 9 photos of him eating the crawfish. In the last 2, he is regurgitating the stuck one.

Spring and summer, bring babies to our local birds. I always have some Carolina Wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus) nesting around the patio. When the babies fledge and leave the nest, there is about a 30 minute window when they can be seen. The parents take them away from the house. This year I was lucky as I had just arrived home from work and heard the commotion as the parents were calling the babies. There were only 2 babies. One actually got under the screen door into our verandah. I had to catch him and put him back outside.

Of course I grabbed the camera to photo the 2 fledgelings. They appear to be all legs and beak. There is just a stub of a tail. How cute can you get? - the miracle of life. Here's 4 photos of these adorable babies.

Happy birding and photography,

David McDonaldemail: davidkmcd@comcast.net

photos copyright 2009 David McDonald

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Bulletin #88 – SE Arizona #6

David McDonald Photography
Friendswood Texas
August 7, 2009

Bulletin #88 – SE Arizona #6

Hello friends,

I returned to Tucson AZ for another weekend of birding and photography to try and finish up on the areas birds. They are many summering migrants, which would be lifers for me.

I used my 2 previous guides for this trip.

Matt Brown is in Patagonia AZ. Here is his web site.

Melody Kehl is in Tucson AZ. Here is her web site.

Both guides I recommend highly. I have used them twice each. They know where the birds are and can maximize your time and effort.

I would like to extend a warm welcome to the members of the camera club at The Woodlands (TX) United Methodist Church. I gave a talk on bird photography to their club on August 3rd and about 2 dozen members signed up to receive these bulletins. Thank you!

Here's a tough question. When is a tanager not a tanager? The answer may be when it is in the ABA checklist area. Recently, the AOU has reclassified the genus piranga tanagers to be members of the Cardinalidae family (cardinals, grosbeaks etc). As all the usual ABA birds called tanagers (Scarlet, Summer, Hepatic, Western) and even the rare Flame-colored Tanager are all of the genus piranga, we in the USA and Canada now no longer have any tanager family birds (Thraupidae). I had read about this possibility for the past several years. It is based on DNA examination.

The whole classification of tanagers, finches and cardinals is in flux as DNA evidence is compared among these new world birds. Here is an interesting article by David Ringer discussing these findings.

This is by way of introduction of the next 2 birds - tanagers. The first is the Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana). The male is yellow with black wings and wing bars and a red head. In the second photo the bird has a small amount of red on the face and is probably a 1st year male. the female has not red at all.

The other is the rare Flame-colored Tanager (Piranga bidentata). This Mexican species is a regular visitor to Madera Canyon in AZ (at least 7 years) and occasionally to the Big Bend area of Texas (last year). This male has been coming to Madera Canyon for the summer and is usually the only bird of this species in the USA. This year he appears to have paired with a female Western Tanager and they are nesting. He is mostly orange with a dark mask.

Speaking of Cardinalidae birds, I got several of them. Here is a male Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea). He is all blue.

Compare this male Blue Grosbeak (Guiraca caerulea) with the bird above. This one has rusty wing bars and the blue is darker. The female in the second photo also has the buffy wing bars and no breast streaking.

The females of both similar grosbeak species were together at the same feeder and allowed a nice side-by-side plumage comparison.
The female Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus) has a lot of heavy streaking on the breast. The bill is pale pink.

The female Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus) has just a few fine streaks on the sides. The bill is bicolored with dark above and pale below

The female Bronzed Cowbird (Molothius aeneus) is all gray brown, but the red eye and heavy bill are the ID marks.









Here is White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis). As you all know, they feed by climbing down tree trunks headfirst, picking insects from the bark. Here is one in the usual upside down posture.

The last bird was a Chihuahuan Raven (Corvus cryptoleucus). I found a group of probable juveniles as I was coming out of Madera Canyon.

The next day I found a nest with 3 large 'babies' in it.

The last photo is a large butterfly, the Giant Swallowtail (Papilo cresphontes). This large (5") butterfly is a common resident of southeastern and southwestern USA. It is often associated with citrus plants. This picture was taken in Madera canyon.

Happy birding and photography,

David McDonaldemail: davidkmcd@comcast.net

photos copyright 2009 David McDonald

To have these trip reports sent to your email, please email me at the above address and ask for subscribe.

Bulletin #87 – SE Arizona #5

David McDonald Photography
Friendswood Texas
August 1, 2009

Bulletin #87 – SE Arizona #5

Hello friends,

I returned to Tucson AZ for another weekend of birding and photography to try and finish up on the areas birds. They are many summering migrants, which would be lifers for me.

I used my 2 previous guides for this trip.

Matt Brown is in Patagonia AZ. His web site is
http://www.lifebirds.com/

Melody Kehl is in Tucson AZ. Her web site is
http://ebiz.netopia.com/outdoor

Both guides I recommend highly. I have used them twice each. They know where the birds are and can maximize your time and effort.

I got nice close-up photos of a couple of colorful orioles. The male Hooded Oriole (Icterus cucullatus) has a black face and throat.

The male Scott’s Oriole (Icterus parisorum) is one of the 2 yellow and black orioles in the USA. It has an entirely black back.

I also added 2 sparrows to my photo list. Both of these birds are AZ specialties.

The first is the Abert's Towhee (Pipilo aberti). This is the largest of our sparrows at 9.5" in length. It is mostly grayish with a rufous undertail and a black mask on the face.

The other is the rare Five-striped Sparrow (Aimophila quinquestriata). This bird can only be found in California Gulch, a canyon just a mile north of the Mexico border. There are perhaps 5-6 pairs of birds there each year. It is a dark sparrow - brown on back and gray breast with a central black spot. It has several black and white stripes on the face.

Another interesting bird was the common House Wren (Troglodytes aedon). This bird occurs all across the USA and southern Canada. However, there is a subspecies in Mexico known as the Brown-throated Wren that also occurs in southern AZ in the Huachuca and Santa Rita Mountains. See Sibley for the discussion of this. When I looked up Brown-throated Wren on the Internet, Wikipedia has a discussion and states that it most definitely is a separate species from DNA analysis. So this might be another future split. However, Sibley does state that the Arizona birds are intermediate between the 2 forms (Northern and Mexican). I didn't know about the Brown-throated Wren until I got home and was researching my photos.

Why this is of interest is that I photographed 2 different House Wrens. The first was in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson and it is a typical with a gray throat.

The other bird was taken in Madera Canyon which is the Santa Rita Mountains. It definitely has a brown throat.

The other famous wren in AZ in the Sinoloa Wren. A single bird of this Mexican species showed up in Patagonia a year ago. I looked for it last fall and didn't see or hear it. On this trip, I finally got to hear and see it. However, it tends to stay hidden deep in the brush and I was unable to get a photo. It has built a nest however, and I did see it coming and going from the nest and got a photo of the nest. Next trip I hope will be the charmer and I'll finally get a photo of the bird.

A surprise bird for me to find was the Band-tailed Pigeon (Columba fasciata). This bird is normally a montane species, however, we found one at the famous Patagonia rest stop. They come down to lower elevations in June to feast on mulberries. This large (14.4") pigeon has a wide terminal band on the tail, a white collar on the back of the neck and yellow feet. It is the only North American pigeon or dove with yellow feet.

Here is the female Arizona Woodpecker (Picoides arizonae). This is the only solid brown-backed woodpecker in the USA. The female lacks the red patch on the back of the head.

In the first bulletin of this trip that had all warblers, I forgot to include the juvenile Painted Redstart (Myioborus pictus). This bird is all dark gray with large white wing patches and white on the tail. The juvenile lacks the red belly of the adult.

Happy birding and photography,

David McDonaldemail: davidkmcd@comcast.net

photos copyright 2009 David McDonald

To have these trip reports sent to your email, please email me at the above address and ask for subscribe.