Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - First autumn invitational devised by local birding duo and their wives

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Tuesday, November 30, 1999

First autumn invitational devised by local birding duo and their wives
New tournament challenges, surprises birders with clever species list

Our team did not win the Professional Birding Association Autumn Invitational Birding Tournament, held Nov. 19 to Nov. 21. My teammates, Beverly Held and her husband, Don Bentley, had a fine two-and-a-half days scouring the countryside for birds. Laughs were plentiful, and if Don's enthusiasm flagged occasionally, he made up for it by his sharp-eyed finds. Held and Bentley provided our luxurious transportation: The Blue Jay, their small motor home complete with, as Bentley says, a sandbox. At 527 points, we placed sixth out of eight teams. The opposition was impressive. We simply were glad to have been included in the lineup.
   Taking first place was a team named Flow Bros & Barbet Boy - Brian Gibbons of Dallas, Marshall Iliff from Annapolis, Md., and Dan Lane of Baton Rouge, La.- that won $5,000 with a point score of 688.
   Second place went to the Sunbitterns, a team composed of local birder Mel Cooksey, Willie Sekula of Falls City, Texas., co-editor for the Texas Region for American Birds, and Brad McKinney from Rancho Viejo, Texas. With a point score of 636, they won $2,500.
   In third place were the Roadrunners: Joel Simon of Corpus Christi, Clay Taylor of Moodus, Conn., and Mark Scheuerman of Houston. Score 603. Prize: $1,250. For the names of other contestants, consult the Professional Birding Association Web site at www.probirding.com.
   Robert Benson, a professor of bioacoustics at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and Kent Taylor, electronics expert, spent many hours devising the tournament. They were aided and abetted by two talented women, their wives Karen Benson and Diane Taylor.
   Our first day was spent catching on to the game. It took us a while to figure that certain birds we would have expected to be high point were not included on the cleverly contrived list. For example, species of birds difficult to tell apart (such as Cooper's and Sharp-shinned hawks) were left off. The only hummingbirds listed were such wildly unexpected species as green-violet ear or green-breasted mango. Counting could not be done on private property.
   Clapper and king rail were not included but a rail that was, the Virginia rail, was probably our best bird of the tournament. We saw it at the base of the boardwalk at the entrance to the Birding Center at Port Aransas. We heard it as we came up the walk but could not imagine what kind of bird it was. It was carrying on in a conversational tone, sotto voce, as mockingbirds sometimes do in fall, a chatty, continuing, self-congratulatory monologue.
   I looked to where the voice seemed to come from and could see nothing. My teammates were slightly ahead of me, scanning the closely woven stems of the cattails at the edge of the marsh. It was Bentley who first saw the bird and said, "See it? Right there.'' Finally we did. The prettiest little rail imaginable sat looking at us from a hollowed-out place in the reeds. Its long but tiny bill was red and open as it continued to converse. Virginia rails look like miniature clappers. They are extremely secretive and appear to a favored few. It was only the third individual of its species I have seen. This was a thrill indeed.
   Our prize was not to be sneezed at: $156.25. Bentley tried to persuade us that he could run it up by investing it in Las Vegas, but Held talked him into allowing us to contribute it to the Audubon Outdoor Club Sanctuary at Packery Channel, a project dear to our hearts.
   All contestants, except for a team that had to drop out because of the illness of one of its members, enjoyed the weekend greatly and were already pressing Benson and Taylor to do a repeat next year.



Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.

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