As usual, Lance and I birded our way down to Corpus starting early friday morning via Victoria, Texas. Our first stop was Buffalo Lake Overlook at Guadalupe Delta WMA where we had a few nice birds. Next up was Hog Bayou Road where they were pumping water into the fields. The mosquitoes were horrendous so we didn’t even get out of the car, but had good looks at a big bunch of shorebirds, Anhinga, Ibis, Teal…etc
We then went on towards Aransas NWR finding a nice American Golden Plover in a field on the way. This species is not supposed to come through Texas on its fall migration, but I guess it doesn’t know that. This is my 2nd sighting in Texas fall this year (photo below by Lance Felber).
Proceeding to Aransas Refuge the most interesting birds were about 2 dozen Scissor-tailed flycatchers lining the road. Not much else to see, as again we were fighting mosquitoes.
Next we checked out Goose Island State Park (a place I had not been in over 50 years). Semipalmated Plover, Least Sandpiper, Western Willet, Ruddy Turnstone, Spotted Sandpiper, Sanderling and Black-necked stilt were found (also fewer mosquitoes).
We then scouted a bit on the west side of highway 181 at Nueces bay in preparation for the class field trip. There we found Western Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, Marbled Godwit, Black-bellied Plover, Dowitchers and a few other shorebirds. Lance noticed this Long-billed Curlew that had a very short bill for that species.
About 8 members of the TAS Shorebird class joined us at 5:00pm at Indian Point. Most of the birds were quite distant, but we did have adequate views of Least Sandpiper, Long-billed Curlew, Semipalmated Plover, Western Willet and a few others. We also started looking at Terns here and got Caspian, Royal, Sandwich and Forster’s. We then went back to the west side of the highway and got good looks at the shorebirds mentioned above along with both species of night-heron.
Dinner was nice at our new go-to Mexican joint Frida’s in downtown Corpus.
The next morning we started on our usual route at Oso Bay at Texas A&M Corpus. There we heard the diagnostic “tu tu tu” of 3 Short-billed Dowitchers, which obligingly flew in directly in front of us. Since the birds themselves told us their identity, I’m pleased that Matthew Crymble alertly got some photos I can use in next year’s class.
Traveling north on the Mustang Island beach at least 8 Piping Plover and 11 Red Knots were satisfying finds. The willows off of highway 361 was dead quiet.
But the excitement came when Lance did his usual fine job of finding target birds!! So we dove off the busy highway for our annual sighting of Aplomado Falcon! This time we had a pair, who briefly made a hunting flight.
A surprising flurry of warblers met us at Leona Turnbull Wetlands, including: Yellow-throated, Orange-crowned, Northern Waterthrush, Northern Parula, Nashville and Common Yellowthroat.
We did not find a hoped-for Palm Warbler at Paradise Pond, but did get our first good look at Great Kiskadee and American Redstart.
Lunch in the deep shade of the pavilion at Charlie’s Pasture Nature Preserve is always pleasant.
Although we had brief looks at Herring Gull and Ring-billed Gull, the Gulf Coast this time of year is a great place to study Laughing Gulls!!! Here are a 1st year, 2nd year and adult, with basic and alternate plumaged adults thrown in for comparison. The first thing to learn about gulls: though the plumage may change, the structure stays the same!!
The last stop in the Port Aransas area were the jetties where we found 2 Common Terns along with the usual suspects. We also enjoyed seeing Green Sea Turtles. While not “enjoyable” seeing two oddly surfacing Redfish was interesting.
The usual break from 3:00-5:00pm seems to be appreciated. We reconvened at 5:00 and made the brief drive to Han Suter Refuge where a few saw Clapper Rail and all got good looks at Anhinga. During our exit we had fascinating views of an interaction of two Brown Anoles, a species I had never seen before! According to iNaturalist the Brown Anole (Anolis sagrei) is a separate species from the Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis) with which we are all familiar.
Prior to dinner at Snoopy’s we easily found 5 American Oystercatchers doing their thing along the Kennedy Causeway.
Sunday morning started at Blucher Park and I believe most birders got a lifer with the 3 Clay-colored Thrush we found (photo from Rio Grande Valley). We also had several Inca Dove and some got looks at Long-billed Thrasher.
Tule Lake was pretty quiet but on the way we found a vocalizing Tropical Kingbird which led us to an interesting side-trip –Dunn-Meany Road off of Up River Road. There we also had Loggerhead Shrike, Lincoln Sparrow and back-lit views of Clay-colored Sparrow.
Arriving late in the morning at the Calallen Sod Farms we only saw 2 Killdeer, however a large flock of cowbirds also contained a single Yellow-headed Blackbird.
To close out the trip we drove the circle at Hazel Bazemore County Park then stopped at the hawkwatch platform to see a few Broad-winged, Swainson’s, Harris’s, White-tailed and Cooper’s Hawks.
I’d call the trip a success!! As a group we had 16 shorebird species (with Lance and I adding 3 more prior to the official start — American Golden Plover, Spotted Sandpiper and Lesser Yellowlegs). The total species count for the group was 124. A notable miss were American Avocet. Lance’s official score keeping Ebird list can be found here: https://ebird.org/tripreport/423383.