Blog #4. 30 April-5 May 2019. Austin and San Antonio, TX, environs

    Marsh Wren at Goose Island State Park

I drive from Goose Island, near Lamar, TX, on the coast, north and west to Austin, TX, to visit Jane Tillman and Mark Lyon and to give a talk to the Travis Audubon Society. The drive takes me into the first interior hilly upland country of Texas which is a nice combination of pastureland and woodland in rolling verdant country (it’s spring!). Drive up through Victoria, Cuero, and Gonzales. Lots of vultures, caracaras, and Scissor-tailed Flycatchers and kingbirds.

    Black Vulture watching for snakes...

Austin is a big a growing city and the highway driving is challenging. On the morning of the 1^st of May, Jane takes me to Mills Pond Park at Wells Branch in Austin. We join several other good local birders and hunt the oaks and other hardwoods for migrant songbirds. One particularly large tree out in the open pulls in birds minute by minute as we stand and pick out species of interest: Yellow Warbler, Blue-headed Vireo, Clay-colored Sparrow, Black-throated Green Warbler, Blackburnian Warbler, and more. 

Then, in another section of the park we hunt for a reported Black-billed Cuckoo, but instead find a nice male Golden-winged Warbler and several Chestnut-sideds and redstarts… No shorebirds there (but two nice Yellow-crowned Night-Herons). We also come upon a Cooper’s Hawk harassing a Red-shouldered Hawk at eye level….

We then drive twenty minutes to Hornsby Bend water treatment station, which is alive with singing Dickcissels and Painted Buntings. The open settling ponds have a small selection of shorebirds: a beautiful female breeding plumage Wilson’s Phalarope, several spring White-rumped Sandpipers, many smaller peeps, Pectoral and Stilt Sandpipers, and dowitchers and yellowlegs… No godwits, but not bad.

    Stilt Sandpipers and Lesser Yellowlegs

After lunch I drive south to San Antonio to visit my great birding friends Patsy and Tom Inglet. They are hosting me as well as the Texas Ornithological Society spring meeting, which is expecting approximately 150 eager birders. On Friday I join a guided tour to Mitchell Lake Audubon Center, just south of the city.

    Wilson's Phalaropes. The females are brighter thane the males...

All sorts of things at Mitchell Lake…. Hispid Cotton Rat…

   Hispid Cotton Rat

Black-chinned Hummingbird male guarding a feeder…

    Black-chinned Hummingbird male

A drying mudflat with some shorebirds foraging…

     Stilt and Least Sandpipers and Lesser Yellowlegs

Neotropic Cormorants resting and sunning

Painted Buntings are widespread in the brushy habitat of central Texas…

The wildflowers along the roadsides continue to run rampant…

One day we visit Palmetto State Park (below) in Ottine, Texas (southeast of San Antonio). It is a beautiful bottomland forest along the San Marcos River. Quite humid and subtropical… 

Good numbers of migrant warblers. We see a Spotted Sandpiper getting a ride like Huck Finn on a log in the flooded River….

A bridge over the river provides nesting habitat for both Cave and Cliff Swallows. They are nesting side-by-side her with nests all mixed up. Cave Swallow has a large oblong opening, whereas Cliff Swallow has a small round opening…

Departing San Antonio for Oklahoma, I stop in the early morning at Balcones National Wildlife Refuge west of Austin to hunt for the endemic Black-capped Vireo, a specialist of the Texas Hill Country (along with the Golden-cheeked Warbler, which I had seen on an earlier trip). Find it in some mixed woodland along one of the refuge trails… It is small and retiring, not easy to photograph….

Much more active in the colorful Yellow-breasted Chat, which is also much more vocal in this shrubland…