Oystercatcher Display
Continuing with Gulls FT last weekend: These 3 made about 5 passes in a very interesting display just for us!!!


Continuing with Gulls FT last weekend: These 3 made about 5 passes in a very interesting display just for us!!!


Here’s another odd coloration on a Least Sandpiper from Hornsby yesterday. I had a similar one last year. The least in the back is more normal colored. The front one looked almost red in person.
Can ya’ll ID these 3 Texas winter shorebirds: 1/5/25, Galveston East Beach. Started the shorebird scoresheet for 2025 with 12 species.
Had 13 shorebird species at Lake Balmorhea this morning. American Avocet, Less Yellowlegs, Greater Yellowlegs, Least Sandpiper, Snowy Plover, Killdeer, Spotted Sandpiper, Long-billed Curlew, Upland Sandpiper, Black-necked stilt, Solitary Sandpiper, Wilson’s Phalarope, and Western Sandpiper. Other birds of interest were: an early Ring-billed gull, Tricolored Heron, Black terns, Forster’s Tern, Neotropic cormorant and Black and…
Saw some rain coming yesterday so headed to Hornsby for another shorebird and migrant fix!! Lots of White-rumped Sand, a flyby of 3 Black-bellied Plovers, Semipalm plovers, beautiful breeding plumage phalaropes, Dowitchers, and Stilt sands and the first time to ever see all 5 peeps on the same day!! Also lots of wet swallows, migrating…
6 species of shorebird at Hornsby this morning, including an example of “frosty vs brown” shorebirds. I don’t recall so many, and so long staying, Avocets at Hornsby before. At last a dozen there today.
Here’s some interesting bird behavior. The first photo is a composite of 3 images. Grackles were harassing a kingfisher to try to kleptoparasitise his fish. The kingfisher would stay low to the water and when the grackles got close, he would hit the water, pausing for an instant and the grackles would over-fly him. Then…