Cruising the bay
Scarlet’s Fins to Feathers nature cruise into South Bay pauses at isolated shorelines where privacy-loving plovers, least sandpipers, cormorants, night herons, spoonbills and more are near enough to the idling boat that it’s possible to study their identifying marks. We nose toward a grove of black mangroves where she and her husband, George, and some of their previous waterborne excursionists have seen the elusive mangrove warbler. A canary-yellow bird with a handsome chestnut head and sweet song, it’s a relatively new nester along the coast. Serious birders come from far away to see it, and a spotting would be a coup for a beginner. But, today it’s hunkered against an early-evening spring breeze and refuses to show itself.
On the river
I move from gulf to river on a four-hour cruise on the Arroyo Colourado with Aaron Reed of Kiskadee Charters. This tributary of the Rio Grande is 144 km long, but we’ll cover only 42, from Laguna Madre, the bay sandwiched between South Padre Island and the mainland, to docks by Harlingen upriver. Aaron knows my heart’s desire. I’d long hoped to see a great kiskadee, a South Texas flycatcher that also dives for fish. Lemon yellow underneath, reddish brown on wings and tail, with broad black horizontal stripes on its white head, the kiskadee is an eye-catcher. Ear-catching is its loud call, a trumpeted, "Not me!"
Aaron knew just where to aim his 5.5-metre fishing skiff to find a kiskadee. Several, in fact, hollering denials and sailing among the trees and brush. I note in my field guide, "10:10 a.m. Joy!"
Three species of kingfishers (ringed, belted and green), osprey in trees and overhead, a dervish of gulls whirling above a wharf, the dusky plumage of a green heron, hawks, wild turkeys and more add to amazements along the river. Aaron’s trip list numbers 53 species.
Climates converge
The 36,000 hectares of the Laguna Atascosa refuge, about an hour from the town of South Padre Island, is at the convergence of desert, temperate, costal and tropical climates, and the great diversity of bird-life (415 species tallied) and wildlife find niches within the variations. Of the 50 ocelots - small wildcats - remaining in the U.S., 20 are on the preserve, according to Sue Woodson, guiding a two-hour tram tour of the 24-km Bayside Wildlife Drive. She and her husband, Dave, are knowledgeable volunteers, catching the pop-up of bobwhite quail in a bush’s low branches, spotting a family of white-tailed deer in tall grass, picking out savannah sparrows flitting on a mud bank.
Trails behind the refuge’s visitor center offer delights as well, especially in the racketing of garrulous, pheasant-size chachalacas and the loud comments by the green jay, a Ferrari among birds with green, blue, black and bright yellow feathers. Watchers bring spotting scopes, long-lens cameras and the naked eye to the trails’ watering holes, and all see wonders.
Spotting made simple
The easiest pickings, however, are at the island’s birding and nature center and next-door convention center, where a linked mile-long boardwalk meanders over mudflats, by streams, past weedy fields to marsh and sandy shore.
Saltwater, freshwater and brackish water come together here and concentrate the birds.
"They’re everywhere. They each have their own habitat," Patricia Burke, birding center volunteer coordinator, says.
"We have the most cooperative birds in the (Rio Grande) valley," says Tamie Bulow, birding center manager. "They’re so agreeable to being looked at by people on the boardwalk."
A curlew, its long bill like a pry bar, levers mollusks from the mud. A white ibis preens with its curved red bill. A spotted sandpiper bobs its backend like a boogie king. A reddish egret stands motionless, a still-life of posture and smoke-and-rust feathers.
"There’s such a wide variety," Tamie says. "Big birds are entertaining for beginning birders because they’re so easy to identify, and we have a lot of these." |
發表於 2011-4-21 18:34
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