Birding Texas 101

Y'all know by now, that when I take my day trippin' travels and share photos, my main purpose is to head to my destination to tally my steps for the day and to take in some birding. Well, over the last year, I have taken, literally, tens of thousands of photos of birds. Some, I have shared on my bird photo blog, while others,  saving them for record keeping. My record keeping is just that...each photo is dated, so when I go back into my archived folders, I know which birds are in my area in that month. Some migrate of course, while most are year 'round residents of South Texas. I thought I'd take one photo from each month's photo record and publish them on Day Trippin' for a change of pace. These frames were added before I changed the template, eliminating my blog's sidebar, and redesigned the frame to a simpler one. [I also have chosen twelve for 'nature' of each month in 2019 to be published at a later date]. Here goes. Birds for the month of:

January 2019 - Brown Pelican



February 2019 - Crested Caracara



March 2019 - White Winged Dove



April 2019 - Reddish Egret

[below, is a white morph, there is a dark morph also which is aptly named and more common.] This particular white morph is in breeding colors. Note the pink and blue on the face...just when breeding. Also, the open wing stance is called a canopy and is believed they do this when hunting for food to shade the water surface for better visibility.  Guide books and websites will tell you this is the only bird that will canopy when feeding, but I have seen egrets doing the very same, and have recorded it with photo proof.  Did the egrets evolve to this behavior also?

May 2019 - Chipping Sparrow



June 2019 - Fledging Northern Mockingbird



July 2019 - Northern Cardinal in molt.  Molting takes place after breeding and takes weeks to regrow new feathers.



August 2019 -Tri-colored Heron



September 2019 - Great Blue Heron



October 2019 - Summer Tanager

This is a female, the male is all red. Sometimes sighted are dappled yellow, orange and red...the dappled is anywhere from 1 year to adult plumage.

November 2019 - Green Jay

Interesting fact - I kinda secretly tend to call this the "mockingbird of the jay family". If not careful, you may think you hear a hawk [or several other bird calls, sometimes it sounds like a cat's meow] calling from the trees, then to discover it is the green jay!!  They are only seen in South Texas, rare sightings.  Mainly a bird of Old Mexico.

December 2018 - Herring Gull

Herring Gulls are one of few gulls that have yellow eyes. There are literally dozens of different gulls around Texas, and sometimes, if lucky, a rogue from another part of the States or Caribbean will visit. At first, they're difficult to ID at times unless you know specific anatomy and colors to associate.  For instance wing markings, eye color, leg color, size, breeding colors, bill shape and markings, like the ring billed gull.  Guess what?  It has a ring around its bill!

[Corpus Christi had a Bar-Tailed Godwit show up in our parks and bay area... from Britain, a few years back.  And birders were literally FLOCKING -pun intended- to our town with tripods, cameras and binoculars; from all over USA and close by foreign lands.  Of course, I was too]  Bud, at times, went with me to help locate it among the local godwits ... and once he made reference to the showing of so many 'crazy' bird watchers it was like the movie [based on a non-fiction book of the same title] The Big Year -starring Steve Martin and other well-known names.  It was, and oftentimes is just exactly like the movie.  If you've never seen the movie it's a good one.  Fun, funny, educational, well written and directed.  And if you do decide to watch it, you will see a bit of me in it too.  Not physically, but me as one of those fanatic birders.