Texas Roundup

Howdy Ho Cowboy, Bienvenido to the Valley!!!  There are two airports to fly into the valley, McAllen(MFE) and Harlingen(HRL).  I always fly into HRL because Southwest Airlines only fly there. Both airports are about 45 minutes apart and are close to all the birding spots. The trip this year was only targeting LIFE birds.  I was only going to be there for 72 hours, so I had to make it count, and I did just that with 4 lifers (previous post). This post I wanted to share other birds I saw, including a rare Code 4, that I had seen back in 1988, so a re-lifer!!

Out of the 133 species that I saw, 22 where Code 2 or higher. That's 16.5%!! So one out of 16 birds were a birding highlight reel. Here's some good ones . . .



Rarest bird seen: Blue Bunting--Code 4 ; originally seen by me 4/4/1988  @ Bentsen SP

Male

seen at Frontera 3/17/16

In dense thickets and woodland edges of Mexico and northern Central America, this dark bunting is fairly common. In our area it is a rare and irregular visitor to far southern Texas, mostly occurring in winter.





Code 4: Casual.
Species not recorded annually in the ABA Checklist Area, but with six or more total records—including three or more in the past 30 years—reflecting some pattern of occurrence.


2nd rarest bird seen: Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl--Code 3  lifer 3/18/16 @ King Ranch Norias division

Lifer #577

82 species on the ranch

 
Code 3: Rare
Species that occur in very low numbers, but annually, in the ABA Checklist Area. This includes visitors and rare breeding residents.




Total seen:  133
Code 2s:       18    
Code 3s:         3   Ferr. Pygmy-Owl, Tropical Parula, Clay-colored Thrush(Robin)
Code 4:           1   Blue Bunting

Code 2: species have a restricted North American range, are more widespread, but occur in lower densities, or are quite secretive making their detection often difficult. We readily acknowledge that some Code-2 species are harder to find than some species that have higher codes.

Audubon's Oriole Code 2

Northern-Beardless-Tyrannulet

NOBT Code 2

Ringed Kingfisher Code 2

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, male  Code 1

Horned Gazelle

Birding the Ranch w van

Hargill Plaza, Snowy Plover

Next up:  Viva Las Vegas . . . spring break part 2