Tuesday, January 9, 2001

Morning venture yields a productive New Year's List

'Early bird' sightings include several 'dowitchers' and a record number of little blue herons

 

The New Year's List started off right on New Year's Day. Ginny Dunham and I usually make this pleasant beginning after noon, but this time we started at 9 a.m., a comfortable enough hour for two elderbirders.
   I got a head start with an orange-crowned warbler (1) that comes regularly to the hummingbird feeder outside my kitchen window. Birds 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 were yardbirds, added from the Dunham driveway. They were: great-tailed grackles (2), an Inca dove (3), a white-winged dove (4), a house sparrow (5), and a mourning dove (6).
   A laughing gull (7) flew over as we pulled onto Santa Fe Street. Four handsome brown pelicans (8) soared above us heading for the bay. Turning south on Ocean Drive, a loggerhead shrike became bird nine. Behind him a flock of rock doves (10) flew up.
   A blue heron (11) waded in water up to its knees. Lesser scaup ducks (12) were found alongside feeding dowitchers (13) just beyond A&M University. We called them dowitchers, meaning "species," because it was difficult to distinguish between the long-billed and short-billed without hearing them call. The next sighting was that of a handsome tri-colored heron (14).
   A little blue heron (15) was a bird we found in multiple numbers later. Long-billed curlews (16), usually found in fields, were wading.
   Next we spotted a bird of shallow water - a willet (17). Double-crested cormorants (18) rested on a spit out in the water, and beyond that spit was a flotilla of ducks: pintails (19), and a blue-winged teal (20). On the spit beside the cormorants were Caspian tern (21), herring gulls (22), and a ring-billed gull (23).
   Along the shore by the Oso were two new-for-the-year species: ruddy turnstones (24), and sanderlings (25). The latter were busy doing their favorite thing, chasing each other in a game of not-quite-touch tag. From small clumps of foliage at a roadside flew several "lbjs" that turned out to be Savannah sparrows (26). We have chased record numbers of them across weedy fields so that we could catch one sitting long enough to identify him by his pink legs and notched tail.
   On a pole sat a beautiful, bright American kestrel (27), our smallest hawk. He is always welcome when he arrives here to spend the winter.
   We looked in the parking lot before the gate of the Naval Air Station, hoping to find water pipits, but there were none. We decided to turn around and go back to Enis Joslin and out toward Padre Island. The road beside the causeway was muddy and not inviting; however, we still managed to add a few species onto the list. A royal tern flew overhead (28), and a group of red-breasted mergansers (29) dove into the water. We also discovered a family of dunlin (30) harvesting food from the mud. With them were two larger sandpipers (31) pectoral, with streaked bibs, and some smaller sandpipers with yellow legs, least (32).
   At Packery Channel, resting on the island in the middle, was a black-bellied plover (33). Buffle-head ducks (34), Ginny's favorites, brought our species list up a notch. Here we saw little blue herons at an unusually high number: seven! We also found another flocking species, a white pelican (35).
   Meadowlarks (36) flew across the park road. Like dowitchers, not identifiable without calls, these birds are usually eastern here.
   An eared grebe (36) fished alone. Could there possibly be only one of this flocking type? That is all we saw. Wading for his breakfast was a great egret (37). Out in the channel were ducks: American wigeon (38), and a northern shoveler (39). Overhead flew a turkey vulture (40).
   We left the park and turned back to the causeway, seeing in the water a number of coots (41), and a pair of black-necked stilts (42). We headed back to Flour Bluff for a few more minutes before the time Ginny agreed to return home. A quick visit to a small park in Flour Bluff allowed us a sighting of another flocking type, the red-winged blackbird (43).
   Chinaberry trees above them were full of a surprise bird, an American robin (44). A disgruntled northern mockingbird (45) attempted to keep control of his tree. We must have missed him several times in our listing frenzy. A pair of waders resided in a wet ditch. We had to wait until they moved into shallower waters to see the color of their lesser yellowlegs (46).
   In the water on the way back to Corpus Christi, we saw a pied-billed grebe (47). On the golf course, we spotted a flock of familiar birds that we would have preferred not to count, brown-headed cowbirds (48), which were heads down, feeding. Passing through an urban neighborhood near home, an eastern phoebe (49) wagged his tail.
   When leaving Ginny, we saw a yellow-rumped warbler (50) in her driveway. I went home, lunched, napped and called Kathie Griffith to see if she would enjoy a bird ride. "Just give me time to turn off the computer," she said. In 20 minutes we were off, headed for the T-heads and boat ramps downtown.
   Next week, I'll tell you what we saw that afternoon.
  

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

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