Texas Birds

At some point, every serious birder comes to Texas because Texas offers a seriously large number of birds. In addition to a wide array of Texas specialties not available anywhere else in the US (e.g. white-tailed hawk, chachalaca, green jay, green kingfisher, colima warbler), winter in South Texas usually offers the chance to see birds from Mexico and Central/South America that stray north of the Rio Grande (and thus become "listable" on your North American bird list).

I am dying this afternoon because Robert reports that a bunch of rare birds are currently in South Texas, and if we were still in Texas, we would definitely be chasing them. But since we're none of us in a good position to see these birds in the flesh & feather, let's do a photo tour of these species, with my thanks to random strangers who have provided these photographs elsewhere on the web. The rare birds (and their current Texas locations in parentheses) include:

Amazon Kingfisher on the Rio Grande in south Texas, near Laredo. (Think Green Kingfisher on steroids - about 50% longer and 3x heavier.) From southern Mexico to South America.

I am crazy for kingfishers, so missing this one hurts the worst.



Bare-Throated Tiger-Heron (Bentsen Rio Grande State Park) from Mexico to Colombia



Roadside Hawk (Frontera) from Latin America



Northern Wheatear (Bee County) from Europe, Asia, Canada, and Greenland - typically winters in Africa. I don't know what the heck an Old World flycatcher is doing in Texas.



Kelp Gull (Aransas) from South America (and the southern hemisphere more generally)



Great Black-Backed Gull (Boca Chica) - winters in northeastern US and Canada



Northern Jacana (Choke Canyon State Park) from coastal Mexico to western Panama



Rose-Throated Becard (4 individuals in 3 locations) from Mexico to Panama. Robert, my parents, and I made an attempt at another becard in South Texas a couple Christmases ago with no luck, thus this bird is approaching nemesis bird status.



Brown Jay (San Ygnacio, along with the Seedeater) from Mexico to South America. This bird used to be more reliably seen along the Rio Grande, but this is the first one I've heard about in recent years.



Lucy's Warbler (Santa Ana) - winters in western Mexico



Townsend's Warbler (Aransas) - winters in Mexico (also the west coast of the US)



Black-Throated Gray Warbler (Quinta Matzatlan) - winters in Mexico, breeds in the western US



Brown Booby (Boca Chica) - breeds on islands in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea and winters "at sea over a wider area"



Robert adds "the Texas Rare Bird Alert is so crowded, it takes about 3 pages of reading before you reach the (ho, hum) Clay-colored Thrush and Northern Beardless Tyrannulet at Bentsen." These last two are rare birds that Robert and I have seen on previous trips to South Texas.