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with Phyllis Yochem
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Tuesday, March 28, 2000
Birding treasures turn into a weekend reward at La Mariposa Ranch
With red feathers gleaming, vermilion flycatcher sits on fence wire to greet visitors
Jim and Ermine Hailey recently invited members of the Audubon Outdoor Club to bird the couple's La Mariposa Ranch in one of my favorite areas of South Texas. Clouds sat heavily above the roof of my VW camper as we started out at 6:30 a.m. We went to San Diego, historic county seat of Duval County, then passed through Benavides and on through the smaller town of Rialitos. As we traveled, the weather lightened up.
Dirt is red in Duval County, and blooming cat's claw bushes filled spaces between lacy-leafed mesquite trees in fresh green garb. The ranch lies down a caliche road. When we parked beside the fence that surrounds the house, our first dazzling sighting was of a male vermilion flycatcher. By now the weather had turned around nicely. The little vermilion darted out and back from the top fence wire with sun shining through the red top feathers of its head.
We were greeted by our hostess who told us that others on the field trip had already started walking down the road toward one of the ponds. She led us along another road where, after only a few steps, we were treated to our second breathtaking sighting.
Birding treasure
We looked and looked as one of the difficult-to-locate treasures of birding, a verdin, worked the upper branches of a thorny bush, turning this way and that to show off its golden head and bright chestnut shoulder patches. Verdins are small sprightly birds with finely pointed bills. This arid, scrub country is perfect habitat for them. We would like to have seen the bird's spherical straw nest but did not find it.
Leah Pummill, club president, was the privileged one who caught a glimpse ahead of a barn owl, white, with disc-shaped face, flying low over the road. We startled up ground doves feeding along the road, and from every bush a handsome pyrrhuloxia peered. These gray cardinal-shaped birds were singing too: a thin, liquid whistle similar to the song of the northern cardinal. Cardinals were also there.
Besides golden-fronted woodpeckers, we saw a ladder-backed woodpecker. By the pond, great kiskadees scolded us, and greenjays. Of course northern mockingbirds were numerous, and long-billed and curved-billed thrashers. The rising rattle of singing cactus wrens filled the air. Their nests are similar to the verdins', but we did not see any of them either.
Several times we stopped to listen and savor the varying sweet songs of Bewick's wrens, white-crowned sparrows, and Cassin's sparrows. Olive sparrows sang but, true to their habit, kept themselves tantalizingly hidden.
Diagnostic songs
Jim took us for a ride on a towed vehicle which had never before been required to haul so many heavy bodies. We knew that most of the meadow larks we saw were probably the western species, so we listened for their diagnostic and totally dissimilar songs. I heard only eastern, and only one of those. Larks, it seems, are not singing much yet.
In the field, a green-tailed towhee was tracked down for the slow-to-see, and in the same tree, a little mystery bird sat very still until we finally figured out it was a female or immature lark bunting.
At noon we returned to the ranch house and Jim grilled hamburgers. Ermine served tender new beets she had pickled from her own garden. The food was great but the real feast was the birds. We sat where we could watch the feeders while we ate. American goldfinches came, and a titmouse. A flock of chipping sparrows mingled with lark sparrows. The vermilion male was joined on the fence by his paler mate.
Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi
resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.
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