31 DEC 2017

Well, I went out to the Texas City Dike this morning to try and get a last minute bird or two.  Very cold and rainy conditions which are perfect for driving down the dike looking for rare gulls and such but I was unable to find anything new for the year.

Every year my "goal" is to get 300 bird species in Texas.  I put goal in quotes because that number is really more of a target of what I think I should be able to get.   I usually get pretty close to this number. My last 5 years look like this:

2013 - 261 species
2014 - 270
2015 - 334(the year I went to west Texas)
2016 - 288
2017 - 305

I was at 299 species this year until December 22 when I went to Galveston to find the Black-throated gray warbler that was reported on a Christmas bird count for number 300.

But it did not stop there. It seemed like rare birds kept popping up all over like this Black-legged Kittiwake at the Houston Yacht club that was also found on a bird count for year bird 301.

Next, I had to chase the Golden-crowned Sparrow the day after Christmas for year bird 302. This one was at Warbler Woods near New Braunfels which is probably about as close as one of these birds will wander to me so I figured I better go for it.  They usually get about as close as Amarillo but not every year.

On the Jackson county bird count on December 27th I managed to pick up a couple pretty good birds I didn't expect to get like a Western Meadowlark and this Canvasback.


Then finally on December 30th I went to the Quintana Jetty near Freeport looking for a rare gull or something and ended up with a Brown Booby for year bird 305 which is a former review species(species that are generally not seen every year and require documentation)


So that wraps up 2017 and I will discuss my goals for 2018 in the next blog.