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Birdwatching
with Phyllis Yochem
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Tuesday, January 11, 2000
Before the coffee finishes brewing, birder begins her new list of sightings
Species call and flaunt their colors outside kitchen window to herald a new year
For me, the first day of the new millennium began with an incredibly auspicious sighting. Out my window by dawn's early light, I saw a bird perched on a crape myrtle. It worked along the limb into better view and I grabbed my glasses (it was too close for binoculars). It had a heavily speckled breast below a gray-brown back. It seemed to be examining me out of its wide eye, which was completely encircled by a whitish eye ring. I identified it easily as a hermit thrush, our only winter thrush.
"What a way to start a list,'' I thought, and realized at the same moment that I was hearing another great bird.
A Carolina wren, it had obviously spent a temperate and wholesome New Year's Eve and was able to give this morning the golden greeting it deserved. Its lovely song went on and on as it changed perches, proclaiming its territory along the periphery of my yard.
Smugly I entered my first two birds on my new list, a list not only for a new year but for a new millennium. Having worked my way by now to the kitchen, I could see the hummingbird feeder out that window. Yes, the buff-bellied hummer was up and sipping. He was soon joined by my pride, the tiny rufous hummingbird that had arrived only a few days earlier.
Competition came chipping up from the yellow hibiscus ... the orange-crowned warbler proclaimed his right to the feeder too. Across the driveway, the northern mockingbird scolded from the midst of his berries on a Brazilian pepper tree in the neighbor's yard while out the back window, on the patio, mourning doves and Inca doves pecked up seeds.
"That about exhausts my yard birds,'' I thought, but a laughing gull flew overhead. House sparrows were on the patio, and a golden-fronted woodpecker called down from the telephone pole.
Grackles and herons
Virginia Dunham and I had agreed to bird in the afternoon. I hurriedly cooked our black-eyed peas and by 2 p.m. was tapping my car horn outside her back door. As she hurried out I spotted a yellow-rumped warbler in the bare branches of her tallow tree.
A troop of great-tailed grackles on the corner of her block brought my list to 13 birds. By then the day was still sunny but a buffeting wind was causing small birds to seek shelter. Shorebirds seemed the best bet to be visible. We headed for Indian Point Park. Gulls were floating in rafts off Ocean Drive. Pigeons were feeding on the grassy banks of Cole Park.
Ginny spotted a black-bellied plover wading in shallow water as we turned into Indian Point. A willet and a winter clad group of American avocets fished in deeper water. A reception committee of European starlings greeted us from the electrical wires.
Great blue herons and black-necked stilts formed a receiving line, while busy ruddy turnstones tidied the shore. On a small sandbar, western sandpipers scampered beside semi-palmated plover. Then Ginny looked far out to the end of the sandbar, back into Corpus Christi Bay, and saw a prize, an American oystercatcher with a technicolor pink bill.
Farther along we found least sandpipers and dowitchers. A tri-colored heron fished alone. Ginny saw a snowy egret that I missed. As we left the park, we picked up a flock of red-winged blackbirds. In Sunset Lake, a white pelican cruised the surface while a brown pelican dove.
We took Moore Avenue out of Portland toward Koonce Loop with a side trip through the Sea Breeze RV Park on Nueces Bay. In the little pond there, beside the Schuster's infamous pin-tailed duck decoys, to our surprise we found three least grebes.
Back on the highway, a red-tailed hawk crossed our path. From a thicket next to an unpaved road flew an Eastern Phoebe. In plowed fields were kildeer and Savannah sparrows. A handsome male northern harrier, pearl gray, pursued his supper. It would probably consist of the meadowlarks we saw skittering away from him.
Later we added lesser yellowlegs, northern shovelers and double-crested cormorant to the list, for a total of 40 birds. We hadn't set any records but were well satisfied with the birds we had seen on the first day of the new millennium.
Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi
resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.
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