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All of the wonderful Rio Grande Valley birding sights I’ve been describing (with the exception of 10th and Violet in McAllen) are part of a the World Birding Center. We were fortunate that one of those sites, the beautiful Quinta Mazatlan estate, was just about a block up the street from our hotel, so we had time to bird there a bit before heading off to the conference for the afternoon.

Quinta Mazatlan is a 1930s hacienda with gift shop and guided tours, surrounded by shrub forest laced with walking trails and feeding stations. It’s easy walking, and the trails were thick with birders. It can be annoying sometimes to have that many birders in one place - ours is a pastime usually enjoyed in solitutde - but there are added benefits from many birders being active in area: Many eyes make for finding more birds.

As a case in point, some sharp-eyed birder located a paraque roosting in the dry leaves just off the trail leading into the site. This bird was then seen and photographed by many people who never would have found the bird on their own. Amazing stuff!

Other birds of note at Quinta Mazatlan:

green jay
altamira oriole
hooded oriole
common ground dove
inca dove
plain chachalaca
orange-crowned warbler
golden-fronted woodpecker
clay-colored robin
buff-bellied hummingbird
rufous hummingbird
black-throated gray warbler

It’s always a lot of fun for me to experience free-flying parrots. They are so boisterous, so colorful, so tropical - even Monk Parakeets from a temperate zone. Maybe part of the allure as well is a personal lamentation that we Americans squandered our native parrot, and I was robbed by preceding generations of ever experiencing Carolina Parakeets in the wild.

Vince remembered something about free-flying Green Parakeets in McAllen, TX, and they roosted each night in trees at the corner of 10th Street and . . . (more…)

I know we probably should have spent more time at the actual meeting, but I really did think that my students and I could benefit more my maximizing our time in the field.  It took me 40 years to get to the Rio Grande; I’d hate to put off really birding it ’til I’m 80! (more…)

We found chachalacas easily at Santa Ana NWR, Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, and Quinta Mazatlan.  Our best experience, however, was at Santa Ana. There we discovered that these weird, arboreal, roadrunner-like chickens could be tame - almost inquisitive.    (more…)

I was stunned throughout my trip to the Lower Rio Grande Valley that the “birdy” places provided plenty of opportunities to obtain great photos of the quarry.  Never before have I been able to encounter life birds and photograph them so easily. (more…)

Jason, Vince, and Andy traveled with me last week to the 4th International Partners in Flight Conference in McAllen, TX.  We left Stillwater at 6 am and checked in to our hotel in McAllen around 7:30 pm. I drove 13 and 1/2 hours that day. 

McAllen really surprised us.   (more…)

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Why don’t they like him? 

He reaches across the aisle.  

He says what he thinks. 

Yes it’s always exciting when a new bird (or lizard or orchid or whatever) is described. This story describes the identification of a new subspecies of prinia, the Nepal Rufous-vented Prinia. A small (500 individual) population currently resides “in a wetland area” in Nepal that provides a biogeographic bridge to other races (subspecies) of the same bird known from neighboring Pakistan and India.

As far as I’m concerned, the most exciting part of the article, however, is this: “The new find brings the number of bird species spotted in Nepal to an exceptionally high 862.”

862?! From Nepal?! We Americans are biased to think of Nepal as a rugged land that exists entirely above the treeline, with nothing but yaks, yetis, and monks indicating a living presence. But there is an incredibly rich diversity of life to be found in the temperate forests downslope, and indeed the tropical forests further downslope. For a country roughly the size of Britain, and completely landlocked, the biodiversity is truly stunning. That diversity seems to be mostly due to a tremendous diversity of terrain that packs tropical to polar landscapes in a mere 59,000 square miles. What other country on earth can boast that?

Planning that trip to get your lifer Himilayan Monal or Rufous-vented Prinia? Better check this out first.

With Red Crossbills around this winter, I’ve been trying for the past few weeks to ride around a bit and see if I could find them at new places with pine groves. West of Stillwater, there is quite a bit of planted loblolly pine at Lake Carl Blackwell. It took me about 3 minutes to find crossbills there. (more…)