Brianbirdbrain

A few blogs ago I mentioned some birds this spring that I wanted to target and then a pair of Surf Scoters were found near Frenchtown road in Bolivar so I figured the chase was on.  I was not really looking forward to the trip for some reason, I didn't sleep well and then slept in until almost 6:15.  That is late for me and I thought the later I left the longer the ferry line was going to get.  I got to the ferry and basically drove right on without even having to wait at all.  Great surprise but I was still feeling really groggy wondering if what I drank this morning was decaf, that would be a day ruiner.  But I pressed on under cloudy skies and windy conditions which was probably why there was hardly any ferry traffic, not great beach goin weather.  Within a few minutes after getting to my spot I saw 2 Surf Scoters through my wind shaken scope mixed in with a group of Lesser Scaup for Texas Life Bird 422.  After that I made my way to Boli...

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Every spring break I try to take a few days off and force my family to go camping.  We have a pop-up camper with a/c and heat so we always have a comfortable night sleep but when we have to run the air I cannot listen for owls and other night birds.  The trip was very nice and between the state park and Amistad National Park I managed to see a whopping 75 species.  My target was around 50 birds with 3 lifers and I busted both of those numbers.  I got 2 of 3 life birds I targeted with a bonus bird.   Cassin's Sparrow and Black Phoebee,  along with the bonus bird a Brewer's Sparrow. Cassin's Sparrow These 3 new birds bring my Texas life list to 420 and my year list to 216 which is the soonest I have ever reached 200 birds for a year.  Thanks to a trip to south Texas and the recent west Texas trip.

The second Saturday of every month Armand Bayou does a bird count/census and when I want to stay local I sometimes help on that count.  It provides a good opportunity to meet other birders in the area and also catch up with the ones I already know.  Today I birded with Andrew Hamlett who compiles for the monthly count and the Christmas Bird Count.  He informed me that we ended up with 149 species on the Christmas Bird Count which is around the average but a mere 1 bird from making the cut on the 150+ species ranking list.  The birds we saw throughout the morning were the expected ones.  This time of year can be a bit slow since many of the winter residents have moved on and we saw only a few summer residents that have arrived to replace them like Northern Parulas,  Yellow-crowned Night Herons, and Purple Martins.   So many birds we count are by hearing them only and that got us talking about our hearing range.  You can check yours out at: https://...

For some reason I decided to bird Orange County this beautiful sunny morning.  The hour and a half drive went pretty smooth and the birding was good.  I started the day with 33 species and ended it with a respectable 70.  That's a pretty good number and with over 50 birds for this formerly green (1-49 species) county it is now deserving of the coveted yellow (50-100 species) color on my awesome DIY map. It's quite a process to change all of this so I will leave it green until I have more things to change.  None of the data that I used to make the map is saved so I would have to redo from scratch. For being such a beautiful day I was unable to get many bird pics but my best one was of this not too common for Orange County Brown Creeper. The drive home was a bit of a headache but nothing compared to the headache to come.  I got home and decided to tackle my taxes.  I've lost THOUSANDS of dollars over the past few years because of the Health Care...