Rio Grande Valley Day 7: Go West

This is part seven of a series of posts on the 2013 Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival

It has officially been one year since I was in the Rio Grande Valley. I better hurry up and post this. All my social media feeds are full of amazing photos of amazing birds and wonderful friends who were lucky enough to be able to go back this year. I will return some day until then...Day Seven. 

We woke up up before the sun on our last full day of birding with the intention of heading West. We'd seen pretty much all the birds there were to see in the Rio Grande Valley near our home base in San Benito. Short of something insane like an Amazon Kingfisher showing up, we needed new territory. Our host Claire told us she had actually seen an Amazon Kingfisher once in a resaca near her house. She was a new birder at the time and even though she had photos and other people saw it, the records committee had never approved her sighting. "Prove me right boys!" She'd say as we headed out birding each day. We weren't about to spend our day searching resacas for a bird that had only officially been reported in Texas once in recorded history. Our plan was to head to Salineno and then on to Falcon State Park to pick up birds in a dryer, more western habitat. 

We grabbed some breakfast tacos at the gas station and drove about two hours west in hopes to be in Salineno by daybreak. A few wrong turns and some construction meant we got there a hair later than we had hoped. We failed to see any Red-billed Pigeons or Muscovy ducks flying on the river and so we were starting the day off with two misses. We did see a flock of Pyrrhuloxia on the road down to the river and ran into some other birders so at least that seemed like a good start.

Things got even better the more we settled in and searched. There is a little nature preserve there right on the river where a wife and husband keep feeders well stocked. We chatted with them as they put out seed, peanut butter and oranges. They told us the best place to wait so I sat down and didn't move. In just a few minutes, a Hooded Oriole showed up. What a beautiful bird. It was the first time I had ever seen one so I was pretty excited. They are beautiful. 

The woman who maintains the feeding station pointed out that she could hear a single note from an Audubon's Oriole as well so we patiently waited. Soon I could hear it too as it got closer and closer. Before too long a male announced his arrival at the fence just 10 feet in front of me and started to chow down on peanut butter. This is an incredible bird. Gorgeous! Who knew orioles like peanut better so much? We usually stick to grape jelly and oranges up in Minnesota.

While waiting for these two to show up, my first Plain Chachalaca's showed up as well. Three lifers in a matter of minutes! I was thinking we had made a good choice on coming west. We then went back to the river and soon got wonderful full scope views of a Ringed Kingfisher, also a lifer and of course new for the trip. 

It wasn't until months later that I got around to reading the book, A Supremely Bad Idea by Luke Dempsey in which he tells the tale of being confronted and threatened by drug runners at the exact spot where we were scoping the kingfisher. I'm grateful our visit didn't involve drug runners or someone trying to take my camera. We felt like we'd seen everything we could see in Salineno, including a roosting Screech Owl so it was time to leave.

We had plans to head to Falcon State Park as well for other species. I'd turned off my mobile phone when we got to Salineno because we were so close to Mexico that I could not get a US carrier, only a Mexican one, and didn't want to incur any roaming fees. 

When we got back up to the highway I turned my phone back on and suddenly received a flurry of text messages from pretty much everyone I had met at the festival.

They all looked something like this (albeit with much more colorful language)

At this point I recall a lot of swearing in the car. Here we were 2+ hours west of Harlingen tracking down western species and one of the rarest birds possible shows up back where we had left from. We still had species to pick up out west and it was only lunch time. Given the intel we had on the bird we hedged our bets and went to Falcon State Park for an hour. We were gambling the kingfisher would still be there in the afternoon. At the park we fairly quickly saw Roadrunner and Couch's Kingbirds, both lifers for me. We didn't see any Scaled quail or Ash-throated flycatcher and decided we needed to leave, we just couldn't risk missing the kingfisher. All the while we were getting texts every 15 minutes from people at the conference..."Kingfisher still here."

Before we could get to the kingfisher spot though, we needed lunch and that brings us of course to demons. Bear with me.

We've all heard stories of Jesus appearing in food. I haven't found any historical records to show when this phenomenon first occurred but I'd sure like to believe it was at the last supper. Wouldn't that be a classy move? Judas is slicing the bread and hey, check it out every one. Jesus gives a wry smile as his face appears in a nice slice of challah. People are constantly seeing this guy in food. There's holy grilled cheese, a crucified jesus in a orange and even a nasty gooey looking christ at the bottom of a marmite jar. (I'll let you google those on your own.)
These are all cases of pareidolia. The animal brain is a constantly running pattern recognition machine. It is an incredible evolutionary tool that has allowed us to survive. It errs on the side of caution and often sees patterns where they do not exist. When it comes to recognizing a tiger in the jungle it is better to err on the side of caution more often than not. We are the descendants of the paranoid survivors.
When we see seemingly familiar patterns in food or clouds or wood grain you have a choice. You either believe in the wonderful, awe-inspiring millions of years long evolutionary story of the human brain or, perhaps the grandeur of that isn't enough for you and you choose to invoke paranormal explanations that these random patterns are the handiwork of God. Though, I have to warn you, if you believe the latter than we have to assume God really is flipping us the bird in this deep space photo taken by NASA.

Photo courtesy of NASA. A small cloud in the Carina Nebula.

Our final full day of birding we were present at a truly awe inspiring sign from the birding gods (or, you know, pareidolia). First though, we have to address gas station tacos. Two days previous we'd been out birding with Kelly and she'd suggested we go looking for hawks at Anzulduas Park.

It was a crappy cold day and the hawks knew it. We didn't see hardly anything. Cold and hungry, we loaded back into the car and made lunch plans. We wanted Mexican food and so it was our smart phones to the rescue. Curt pulled out his phone and informed us there was a highly rated restaurant just 5.3 miles away. Perfect.

We followed the directions only to discover the restaurant kept getting further and further away. Next time we asked it was 6.8 miles, soon, it was 15 miles. We checked and we were headed the right way but this mysterious restaurant defied the laws of physics and kept getting further. We eventually made it to the 5.3 mile away restaurant after about 25 minutes. Curt's phone was new and I suspect the miles he kept reading were the miles to the next turn instead of the miles to the final destination.

We got there and after the meal Kelly told us that it was okay but that we'd paid too much. "Oh really?"

"Yes," she told us. "The best tacos you can get are way cheaper."

Kelly then went on to tell us that the best tacos are the ones at the gas station. You have got to be freaking kidding me. Minnesota gas stations pretty much have one hot food item and that is shriveled up hotdogs on a roller grill. This is Texas though, what do I know? Maybe the cheap tacos at the gas station really are great. The price is right, you get your food fast and if they taste great then so be it.

We'd learned that if you doctored them up with enough fixings then they did, indeed, taste pretty good.

So, we ate a lot of gas station tacos and we figured we'd stop on the way to the Amazon Kingfisher. We needed food so we pressed our luck and stopped to grab some quick chow. As one of the workers was heating up the tortilla shells she let out an exclaim of surprise. Wow, just wow. Check out this tortilla. 

That's a human skull wearing a top hat right?

Filled with tasty demon-approved tacos and armed with directions to the spot with the kingfisher we tore back east and made it there by 4:30 pm. There was still a large crowd though not as many as earlier in the day. Still, the police were out directing traffic to make sure no one got killed as they ran around on the side of the road. Apparently the sheriff had told the officers, "Keep everyone safe and make sure they have a good time." How's THAT for hospitality? It doesn't hurt that everyone here knows birders do a lot for the economy.

As soon as I got out of the car people eagerly had us look through their scopes. The bird was very far away and at that distance you kind of had to take their word that you were looking at the right bird. Here's what the view looked like zoomed as far as possible though my 400mm camera lens. 

Can you see the bird? 

If I crop it in you can make it out...kind of.

It wasn't that great a look. We waited, and luckily the bird eventually flew closer and I got the shot below. If it had hung around longer I could have played with the camera setting to get a better shot but, wow, what a cool bird. Look at that honkin' huge beak!

It was our last day of birding in Texas and I was happy to have added 8 more lifers. I never thought I would cap it off with an Amazon Kingfisher.

In the final tally I saw 155 species of birds in 7 days of birding.  Forty-eight of them were lifer species I'd never seen before. It was a fabulous trip and I can't wait to go back.

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St. Paul Flood: Before and During photos

I saved some images off the city of St. Paul's web cams last week before the crest of the river. The river was already high at that point so some of the differences don't seem that dramatic. Also, the city has done a lot to prevent flooding in situations like this so some of what we see here is that the levees are doing their jobs.

Upper Landing Before and During Flood:
These two don't look all that different. Look though in the second photo and you can see that there is less of the levee visible.



Union Pacific Bridge - Wide Angle Before and During Flood:

The sun really messes with this camera but you can see in the second photos that the bridge supports are barely out of the water.



Union Pacific Bridge - Close-Up Before and During Flood:

Check out the bridge supports on the right hand side of the trail lift bridge. They are completely under water in the second photo.


Raspberry Island West Before and During Flood:

The most dramatic difference on the West side of Raspberry island can be seen at the building. In the first photo the sidewalk and path to the water are visible. In the second photo, the water is up to the building.



Raspberry Island East - Before and During Flood:

The sun makes this one a little hard to see but a good chunk of the east side of the island disappears under the water in the second photo.



Lambert's Landing - Before and During Flooding

Here we can see why they close the road along the river as water has covered it in the second photo. Technically the water hasn't topped the levee. I think this is a low spot and the water is probably coming up from a drain that leads to the river.


Harriet Island - Before and During Flood:
This is the most dramatic difference. Harriet Island has a lower levee than the rest of St. Paul and it is the first to flood. It is also designed to flood though so the building isn't ruined.


Harriet Island Park - During Flood
For some reason I didn't get a pre-flood shot of this one but you can see the extent of the flooding in the photo below. The building in the photos above is visible in the lower right of the image. While the park itself has flooded, you can see the water did not even come close to the tall snow covered levee in the background that protects local businesses.


~Kirk

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Great Horned Owl on Motion Camera

Many regular readers will know that we have a motion activated camera on a dead deer out at work. We've seen crows, bald eagles, raccoons, and coyotes each eating their share. When we looked at last night's photos though, we found a wonderful surprise. A Great Horned Owl!

The owl hung around for quite a while (on and off over the course of 5 hours!) so there were lots of photos. I compiled them into a short video.





Here are a few stills. This one is one of my favorites. The owl is really working hard to get a meal.

The shot below is actually then last of the video. Why is it the last one? Look carefully and you can see the owl finally flying away.



It pays to look a little closer though. I enlarged the section with the owl and you can see it is flying off with the deer's leg!


We've heard Great Horned Owls at work but very rarely see them. The deer is situated in some pretty good Great Horned Owl habitat though. Great Horned Owls are a species of the forest edge and the deer is about 10 feet from the edge of the forest.

Special thanks to naturalist Paul Smithson who's been checking on the camera's lately!

~Kirk

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Coyotes Uncover Deer in the Snow

We went on a hike this past week to the site where I had the trail cam up last month to check on things. We'd gotten a lot of snow and the coyotes stayed away for a while. Seem they remembered the deer was there though as when we went out to check on things earlier this week the coyotes had clearly been busy. They'd completely dug up what was left of the deer. Those are coyote tracks coming though the prairie to the deer.


You can see the fallen tree in the background which is where the camera's used to be attached.


At the site, there were clearly coyote tracks.


There was evidence of birds as well. My shadow is pointing at wing marks on the snow.

We've retired this site for a little while but we have a new road killed deer in a second location with both cameras on it. Hopefully I'll have some new photos soon. I'm hoping for some daytime video of the coyotes.

~Kirk

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A Lone Mangy Coyote

The pack of three coyotes visiting the dead deer in our prairie at work are beautiful. They seem healthy, their coats look to be in excellent shape, in short, they look great.

This weekend though, someone else showed up on the motion activated camera. On Saturday, the camera caught this lone coyote at the deer. It came at 10:40 in the morning. I'm being a little unfair to call it mangy. I don't think it really has mange but look at that tail. Not the pretty bottle shaped tail normally associated with a coyote.

I don't think this is one of the three we've been seeing. Very interesting. Also interesting that it was there at 10:44 am. Nice to get some daytime shots.

We now have two cameras up, one still, one video. I'll check soon to see if we captured anything and report back.

~Kirk

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Bald Eagle Feeding at Dead Deer

I hinted a week back that I had seen eagle tracks at our deer carcass. I was hoping to catch the eagle on the motion activated camera but so far had been unsuccessful. I partly wanted to confirm which kind of eagle it was. Golden Eagles from the Ontario area come down to Minnesota in the winter to feed on deer carcasses. No such luck, this is a Bald Eagle. Pretty cool though. All of these photos were taken last Friday at about 2:30 in the afternoon. I cropped them in close and it is pretty clear that the trail camera has some pretty bad chromatic aberration in the lens which leads to the red and blue halos around the eagle. I suppose with the white head that becomes patriotic. Oh, and the blood on the beak is red too.

As usual, click on any image for a larger view.







~Kirk

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Coyotes are Afraid of Flash

it looks like my theory on the flash scaring away the coyotes has been confirmed. I set the camera to take multiple shots in a row. Here are the coyotes feeding on the deer at 5:36 pm. The second photo is also at 5:36 pm, taken just moments after the first.






The coyotes completely cleared out. They did come back though later in the night. they showed up again at 11:02 pm. This time all three in the pack are visible. Click on the image to enlarge it to see more detail.

Once again, the second shot a few seconds after the first shows no sign of the coyotes. The fact that they came back twice in one night though may indicate they are getting used to the flash. It will be curious to see what happens over the next few weeks.


~Kirk

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Coyote Party Photos

What happens when coyotes find a dead deer in the prairie? Coyote Party of course.

Last night was a good night for our motion activated camera in the prairie. We have it focused on a dead deer. We've gotten a few shots of lone coyotes in the past weeks but last night was different. We captured a pack of coyotes (or at least part of the pack) at the deer. There are three in the photo below. At the site itself I discovered the coyotes have removed part of the back leg of the deer. I found it about six feet from the deer. It was pretty much where the coyote is on the right hand side though I don't think this coyote was caught in the act as the leg was removed the night before when we didn't have a camera up.


This brings up an interesting point. Is the camera flash scaring away the coyotes? We only tend to get one photo per night. The night the camera wasn't up the coyotes did some serious work on the deer. I'm guessing the flash scares them off for the night. I've reset the camera to take photos more rapidly so we'll see if that makes a difference. Now it should take three in a row and then wait one minute before taking more. If it still only gets one shot then we'll know the flash is scaring them away. I'm interested to know if they'll get used to the flash over time.

~Kirk

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Coyotes on Motion-activated Camera

We've known there are coyotes on site at work for years now. We find their tracks in the snow, we hear them at night and we find their scat on the trails year-round. I've never been successful in catching any on camera though. That all changed in the past week. My co-worker Paul took a game trail camera down to the lake to see what might show up. We got a blurry cottontail rabbit, a deer and ... our first coyote captured in a photo.

This was at 10:30 at night on November 20th. With this success under our belt we tried other cameras in new locations. We have a dead deer in our prairie. We put one out there every year for the animals to eat. When schools come they can see all the tracks of the animals that eat the deer. There are an impressive number of visitors. We see tracks from raccoons, opossum, mice, crows and coyotes. I've even personally seen a bald eagle eating the carcass. We've never actually seen a coyote at the deer. We put fresh batteries into the camera and set it up near the deer. Here's what we captured.

On the 24th, the first coyote showed up at 11:33 pm. The next night, a little earlier in the evening, a coyote cautiously approached the deer. The camera is set to wait five minutes between taking photos and we didn't get multiple photos of the same coyote in one evening so that tells me they don't stay long. The way this coyote is cautiously approaching the carcass (photo below) tells me this might not be the same animal as seen the night before. I would think an animal that had already been feeding here would be less wary.

The next morning, a coyote came to the deer in broad daylight. At 9:30 am, this coyote was caught by the camera. It looks more interested in the trail than the carcass. I'm thinking it might smell the other coyotes.

The batteries died at this point. The cold Minnesota winter is brutal on the batteries. The camera's take 6 D-cells but it still burns through them fast in the cold. When we get some fresh batteries we'll put the camera back out. I'm thinking it might be interesting to set it to a shorter lag time between photos. Also, we can set the camera to Video mode which could be really cool. I don't think it will work at night though as clearly the flash helped us get three of the four photos above. The deer has fresh eagle tracks around it so I'm hoping we can catch an eagle on "film" as well.

~Kirk

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Monarch Hatch

Being a naturalist means there is always something interesting to see in the world. Yesterday I got to watch baby Eastern Phoebe's fledge from their nest. Today...Monarchs.


My co-host on the podcast Paul collected a Monarch butterfly caterpillar from his back yard. He and his daughter placed it into a special pop-up monarch habitat and watched as it hung from the ceiling and formed a chrysalis.


He uses the Port a Bug which works great and is affordable. It collapses into a carrying case when not in use and you can see through the sides.

Paul wasn't going to be home the day the butterfly was expected to emerge from the chrysalis so he left it in his cubicle. As expected, when I came in this morning there was a brand new Monarch butterfly hanging from the bottom of the empty chrysalis. I took it outside and the circle of life continues on.


Raising butterflies is a great educational opportunities for families. Just be sure to do it responsibly and take good care of them until they can be released.

~Kirk

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