Tuesday, April 24, 2001

More birds to arrive by months end for viewing

It was exciting to see mountain bluebirds in late winter near the Nueces River, but now we have learned that the eastern bluebirds, which spent the winter with Judith Reader on Graham Road in Flour Bluff, have nested and are raising a little bluebird chick family. So far as I know, the closest to Corpus Christi this has happened before is Skidmore, and around Lake Corpus Christi.
   Slow migration
   As of April 17, spring migration has been slow. I have made numerous futile trips to Packery Channel County Park to find only a single scissor-tailed flycatcher, or a lonesome osprey, looking dejectedly down from his post.
   This year we are hosting the Texas Ornithological Society spring meeting Thursday through Saturday, and so have an ambivalent desire: we both want to see birds and, at the same time, hope they are not here yet, and will arrive at the end of the month to put on a good show for our guests.
   Blucher Park on Saturday of Easter weekend had more birders than birds. In an account submitted to Texbirds on the internet by David Chenevert, people there were from California, Pennsylvania, Canada, Germany, and several distant points in Texas.
   Only six of the 28 species seen were wood warblers. They were blue-winged, orange-crowned, Nashville, northern parula, common yellowthroat, and yellow-breasted chat. Of those, the orange-crowned is actually a winter resident, and common yellowthroat often appears on Christmas counts here. The little green heron, being a nocturnal migrant, tried to roost by the creek but was often disturbed by friendly birders. Another day-sleeper, a chuck-will's-widow, provided a life bird for some birders.
   A sora rail was a good find, as were a yellow-bellied sapsucker and a ladder-backed woodpecker. An overhead flight of white pelicans was beautiful. A flock of anhingas also flew over.
   A better trip
   On April 18, after a shower with a norther, things changed for the better. A trip to Packery Channel Park found Bruce Sherman photographing a pair of prothonotary warblers almost at his feet. The indigo buntings were feeding on the ground and hummingbirds in groups competed for the scarlet blooms of coral bean plants.
   Leah Pummill, president of the Audubon Outdoor Club was parked by the oak mott close to the park entrance. She pointed out to us a dazzling scarlet tanager and a yellow-billed cuckoo.
   Next morning, when I could not go, Erwin Becker called to tell me Blucher Park was full of birds and no birders were there to see. So excited he could hardly talk, he named some of the birds. There were orioles, and rose-breasted grosbeak, he said. This is not the silent spring after all.
   Thank heavens!
  

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

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