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with Phyllis Yochem
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Tuesday, February 29, 2000
Blur of a bird catches winter wren lovers' fancy; 20-minute stakeout worthwhile
Audubon field trip chuck-full of wood ducks, blue-gray gnatcatchers and pine warblers
B.J. and Mike Dunn hosted a well-attended Audubon Outdoor Club field trip recently at their Broken D Ranch near the intersection of Farm-to Market roads 624 and 666. The ranch land runs beside the Nueces River, and its roads cut through brush and mesquite stands. The day was one of the few cool days we have had this winter.
Not far from the ranch house was a promising woodpile that immediately registered in alert birder minds as winter wren habitat. The well-behaved and quiet, if large, group ranged along the road beside the stack. A few gentle, tiny pishes began to issue from compressed lips of leader Joel Simon. Nothing. This was one unanimated woodpile. A few bars of screech owl were whistled by another eager birder. Nothing. Eddie Arnold could stand it no longer. He began to flank the woodpile, edging carefully along one side. Nothing.
Gone in a blink
Winter wrens are the tiniest bits of birds. Their perky bodies are wren shaped, bright brown, and with the shortest imaginable tab of upturned tail. Their habits are suitable to their size, secretive in the extreme.
Our eyes were on the woodpile, wide screen, every ragged stick end, the stump at the back, and the split tree trunk with logs and twigs pushing up through it. All of us were watching for brown flutter, the smallest flash of motion. A giant Eddie skirted the peripheral vision. He deliberately stirred the edges of the pile.
Suddenly, there it was ... a blink would have kept a birder from seeing it. The fastest blur of brown came to the surface, spurted across five of the heaped branches, and was gone. Was it only imagination? The ones who saw it knew it was a wren. But some didn't see it ... I did not.
I walked on with the group a little farther. A refrain kept playing in my head, "That would have been my best bird for the day." So I decided to go back and stake it out, just sit there by myself until it came up. I tried that, and watched the stillest woodpile in Texas for about 20 minutes until the group came back. Eddie made another foray and, with his wife Nina urging him, kindly let me tag along. That time I too saw the elusive brown blur. It was certainly my best bird of the day.
Unseasonal group
It was not the only one, however. As the group came up to the river, the birders in front saw a pair of wood ducks just disappearing around the bend. Along the trail near the river, high in the trees, we encountered an unexpected and unseasonal group apparently traveling and feeding together. Such mixed flocks of winter migrants are often found on Christmas counts at Rio Corona in Mexico.
Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi
resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.
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