Bolivar Flats and Anahuac: Friends, Fevers and Feelings

Back to Texas! Let's start with the legendary Bolivar Flats. Our wonderful group went on a couple different days; it was quite good one day and more on the meh side on another day, but it was easy to see why it's such a heavily-birded spot. The first time out we had good looks at this Glaucous Gull, which was lingering late into the spring. This is the southernmost Glaucous that I have ever seen, which also gave better looks than what I'm used to.

I expected a lot of great birds on this trip, but hulking arctic gulls were not among them. You just never know what will turn up when MAX REBO BIRDING TOURS is in the field! Speaking of unexpected hulking arctic birds, we just missed a Pomarine Jaeger by a few days that had been hanging out at Rollover Pass. I've never even seen a Pomarine Jaeger sitting on solid ground before, and I've seen a lot of them. The Vague Runt potential of the Bolivar Peninsula is not to be taken lightly.

Glaucous Gull bills look almost tubular to me sometimes, due to the depth and relative lack of a gonydeal angle on many individuals like this one. We also had Great and Lesser Black-backed Gulls here on this day...three quality gulls, especially for late spring, all of which were Sierra Bravos for me. Over 300 in Texas now, mmmm.

This Machine Nate and Officer Shaw courageously plow through distant flocks.

California has a lot of great birds, but Wilson's Plover is not among them. Birders who dwell within the range of Wilson's Plovers should consider themselves lucky. Be sure to stop and smell the Wilson's Plovers next time you are around them, I bet they smell good.

It's hard not to think of Wilson's as a heavily enhanced Snowy Plover. What invertebrate could withstand the bludgeoning bill and furious charge of a Wilson's Plover? Snowies, while similar, appear to woo their prey into submission by being cute.

We never could find any actual Snowies. Our trip list suffered for it, but we soldiered on.

Black-bellied Plovers were in abundance, as expected, and were looking mighty fine and crispy. At another site, we saw some get strung as American Golden-Plovers...which isn't a digression of the Summer Tanager-Blackburnian Warbler class, but very typical all the same. One past trip report I read from the area (probably at the same site where this misidentification went down) showed photos of an obvious American Golden-Plover, with the author discussing how it was an Upland Sandpiper and how he convinced his whole dubious group of the identification.

Geri, how do you do it? The blunders never cease.

Continuing with the plover theme, Piping Plovers are very lovable and easy to find at Bolivar. I wish I could have spent some more time with them, as they are worth all the time in the world. Speaking of time being a Piping Plover (as opposed to a flat circle), this species has grown into a major blocker in California...I think we are due for another.

One of the great perks of birding the UTC (and the thing that mostly makes the birding so great in the first place) is seeing migrants drop straight in from who-knows-where, like these Wilson's Phalaropes did. Yankee bravos! Oh by the way, you can potentially get ticketed for parking here without a beach pass, which you can apparently get from many local businesses. We just missed getting busted by a couple minutes one day.

Dan found a sand friend (sand-friend), and leaned in to hear what he had to say. His sandy compatriot whispered, "Your work here is finished, my friend. Go out to the command ship and await my orders."

Not as famous as Bolivar Flats but birded just as hard (since it is conveniently halfway between High Island and Bolivar) is Rollover Pass. We didn't see anything too juicy here but there was an enormous tern flock (mostly Commons) here one day.

Back to Anahuac! Yes, I will stoop to taking Cattle Egret photos. Disgusting, I know. What won't I do? Well, you don't get to be #7 by being classy. I will say that I won't chase unambiguous escaped birds though...some things are just wrong. Mandarin Ducks come to mind...seems like quite a few have turned into chase targets in recent years, which defies logic. The only Mandarin Duck I've seen was by accident, and I feel shame in even mentioning it.

Least Bittern in a classic pose. This is much better than a Mandarin Duck. I'm amazed this photo came out, I was pretty much shooting into the sun. Bless you Least Bittern, mysterious wraith of the reeds. Bless you Nikon, god of cameras.

Piles of Purple Gallinules await you on the Shoveler Pond Loop, where they are acclimated to cars and aren't shy. Check out the length of that gallinule talon!

Common Nighthawks were indeed common on multiple days. We didn't have the luck to blunder in to any Eastern Whip-poor-wills anywhere, but incredibly had a day-flying Chuck-will's-widow cruise high over Officer Shaw's Sugar Land yard right before yours truly had to drag himself to the airport. Classic April Magic in Texas.

Dipper Dan and I specifically went down into the bowels of the refuge in search of Seaside Sparrow, which I've only seen a few of and Dan had not seen at all. Finding them was an easy task...there were dozens of them out in Yellow Rail Prairie, singing and displaying everywhere. Seaside Sparrows galore! We were chuffed. Despite our Great Success with seeing copious amounts of Seaside Sparrows, we never did connect with any Nelson's here or anywhere else.

On the way back in from Trinity Bay and the Seaside Sparrows, we stopped at the one and only little woodlot next to the road before the Shoveler Pond turnoff. It was hella birdy! And there was a drip! In eBird this is called the Jackson Prairie Woodlot - I had never heard of it before but it was quite birdy, and I recommend it highly. We saw very few Blackpoll Warblers that week, this is the only one I got deec photos of.

While we had to put some work in daily to find Blackpolls, the other monochrome warbler migrating through the area was abundant day in and day out. Yes, you are in for a treat...I am talking about the Black-and-white Warbler.

On one emotional, tear-filled night, a choked up Dipper Dan confessed to me how much Black-and-white Warblers mean to him. Luckily for Dan, we saw them pretty much constantly. He had Black-and-white Fever, flogging the migrant patches for maximum Black-and-white yield.

Who am I to argue with these warblers, these feelings, these interesting approaches? Not even #7 has jurisdiction over such things.

Speaking of fevers and waking dreams...at one point my head became light...my tongue swelled up, and a salty liquid discharged from my eyes. What had gone wrong? Was this the end of Seagull Steve? It almost was. You see, Bay-breasted Warblers also occupied the woodlot, and this bird was suddenly gleaning about unnervingly close to me, closer than I've ever been before. The crippling effects of this species are not well-publicized compared to other warbler species, but I assure you they are very real and very serious. I thought this was a close call, but it was nothing compared to what I was about to experience at Sabine Woods...more on Sabine in the next installment.

Yet another Philadelphia Vireo that loves to forage in close proximity to people. This is the people's vireo, the vireo of the commons. Philadelphia Vireos are for all to enjoy. For a bird that is misidentified so much, they sure are considerate about trying to make sure everyone gets to see them well.

Puerto Rico Winter Tour Y2K16: La Parguera, Maricao, Puerto Rican Nightjar, Laguna Cartagena

In the afternoon, we called it quits at Cabo Rojo and headed east to La Parguera for some good old-fashioned geri birding. The "hardware store" in La Parguera was easy enough to find, though not so easy to identify correctly. For anyone heading that way, this is what it looks like. You see, BB&B is here to help.

Why were we here? This was the easiest and most reliable place for Yellow-shouldered Blackbird. On the right side of the store, they toss out bread every day to feed the doves/icterids, and Yellow-shouldered Blackbirds are expected among the visitors. Well it turned out we got there way too early, but eventually the bread went out and the blackbirds came in.

Success! Another endemic down. We didn't see very many, and unfortunately 2-3 of the birds we did see (in other words, about half) had growths on their faces that looked a lot like avian pox. It was a bummer...I'm not sure what exactly it was or how they contracted their afflictions, but I suspect feeding them there may not be the best idea...they are endangered and not exactly thriving. We had a much better experience with them a couple days later someplace else, which I will get to in the next Puerto Rico post.

The next morning was just a total clusterfuck. There is no other way to describe it, although we did lifer Puerto Rican Vireo in the process. Not only did we get lost, we also definitely would have gotten ourselves stuck if not for being able to use 4X4. Google Maps was our enemy that day. We were trying to get to the Maricao forest, sanctuary of the Elfin-woods Warbler and supposedly one of the best places to bird...well it turns out getting there from the south is easy (go to Sabana Grande, take 120 all the way there), but that is the only way you can go! Don't even think about trying any other horseshit, unless it is from the town of Maricao itself (north of the forest).

We did finally make it, first stopping at a little unused track that goes north of 120 at the 13 km marker. We got great looks at Puerto Rican Vireos, which are not dissimilar from Eastern Bell's Vireo.

We couldn't ask for better looks really, so this was very satisfying. After getting vireo'd, the next bird we saw was a female Elfin-woods Warbler...holy shit! I thought those birds were supposed to be hard! A Green Mango was flitting around, and a little while later Dipper Dan and Officer Searcy found the male Elfin right on the main road.

If I was British, I would tell you that the views we had of this bird was superb. I'm not though, so the views we had were fucking sick. The bird was very cooperative, not being in any rush to get anyplace, and wasn't acting that much different than a typical warbler. Before I knew what was happening, it was already too late...I had birdgasmed.

I like this photo because it is confusing. Behold the No-headed Warbler ("No-faced" subspecies).

Though it lacks the power to melt face or cripple body and mind, seeing this bird well was one of the highlights of the trip for me. It is only found in higher altitudes on the island, and Maricao is the one really reliable place for it...had we missed it, we would have come right back up the next morning. It was first discovered in 1969, which is astoundingly recent. These idols of inconspicuousness managed to remain safely unidentified for an incredibly long time.

The rest of Maricao was...disappointing. It turns out middle of day is not always best time to make for greatest of bird. We had some mediocre road birding elsewhere, but the area around the ranger station was quite dead (though Officer Searcy did get another Elfin here), and we got kicked out of one of the recommended birding trails. There was some sort of bizarre operation going on that involved some biologists doing something bird-related who did not want to talk about what was happening, I don't know exactly what they were doing but it looked interesting. Which is not what needs to be talked about...the point is that I'm sure the birding is better earlier in the morning. We were bummed to not pick up anything else new for the trip (at this point, not seeing Lesser Antillean Pewee was getting stressful), but we got the bird that mattered most and headed down to roll the dice on Masked Duck.

Dipper Dan and I knew the fix was in even before we got out of the Jeep. We knew how the Masked Duck game works...the Masked Duck wins every time and anyone else playing eats shit. Simple. And so we made a long, hot walk through the mud (the roads were way too wet to drive) to the known Masked Duck pond in Lajas Valley. There were some crappy exotics, Least and Pied-billed Grebes, a Purple Gallinule (trip bird!), a rail that scurried over the aquatic plants that went unidentified (this is a good spot for Yellow-breasted Crake as well...dammit). No duck, as expected.

At least the incoming storm was nice to look at. I got stuck in the mud at one point on the way back (how embarrassing!), but at least we made it back to the Jeep before the rain really hit and no one had broken into it. Success? No.

Life is pain.

Maybe I will have another chance at Masked Duck in 2017. Or 2018. Does it really matter? I'm not going to see one.  Anyways, after our unsurprising failure we made the brilliant decision of quitting birding for the rest of the afternoon instead of hiking to another pond through the mud where we would not see Masked Duck again, and retreated to our place in Guanica. We got dinner fixins at a grocery store, chilled for an hour, then set the next nerdplan into action.

The good thing about staying where we were is that we were right next to the Guanica Dry Forest. El Seco is good for daylight birding and all, but what that really means is that we were staying right next to Puerto Rican Nightjars, which are pretty much endemic to this rare and restricted habitat type. Instead of looking for them where most people do, we turned east on 333 and slowly drove with the windows down, listening...we had them within 5 minutes! We heard multiple individuals and had great looks at one, though we lack photos to prove it...

The stretch of road around 17.957622, -66.869134 was quite good for them. I couldn't believe our luck, they were remarkably easy to find considering this species was thought to be extinct for a considerable span of time. How often do you get to see a species that has come back from the dead. Nocturnal [e]mission complete!

The next morning it was off to Laguna Cartagena, one of the best wetland sites on the island. White-winged Parakeet was a reluctant lifer en route. We approached from the only recommended entrance point, turning south off 101 at 18.028426, -67.109147. This is a straight shot down to the western access points of the refuge, but the road was covered in vast, deep puddles...it would not have been possible to barge this in a sedan, but we had no problem with the jeep. We made it to the trail to the tower without any problems.

There were a great many butterflies here...here is a buckeye thingy.

I think this here is a cracker thingy.

This American Kestrel (not a thingy) was following the trogon methodology of domain surveying.

When we first got to the tower, I was kind of disappointed...the laguna is highly filled in with sediment and vegetation, but with persistent scoping we found some ducks and gallinules in the smaller, more open pockets that hadn't been choked out by reeds and shrubs.

The tower really did provide a good view, as Officer Searcy demonstrates. Most importantly, it allowed us to find West Indian Whistling-Ducks (many!), which are very uncommon on Puerto Rico and not at all something that was guaranteed...this lifer helped make up for the lack of Masked Duck, which presumably can also be found in this large wetland. Dipper Dan even found a pair of whistling-ducks with ducklings, for bonus bird points. Other trip birds we got here included Ring-necked Duck, Ruddy Duck, Black-crowned Night-Heron, and Sora.

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After the tower, we walked another trail from the entrance road out into the marsh (18.012569, -67.108868). The "trailhead" is well-marked, and a short distance north of the parking area for the tower. It is very overgrown but there was still some decent visibility toward the end. Fortunately, some West Indian Whistling-Ducks were holding things down, and although not hell of close I did my best to soak them in with my eyes.

West Indian Whistling-Duck and Glossy Ibis (trip bird!) combo. I really like that combo.

The marshes here are absolutely saturated with Purple Gallinules, I don't think I've ever seen so many in one place.

I've still never dealt one the crushing this species deserves, but I think you get the idea that these crippling blue bastards are just begging to be looked at. Why do they exist? How lucky are we to live in a world with Purple Gallinules?

Horrendously large numbers of butters here. Just terrible. Plagues of them. It was great.

Our eBird checklist for the morning is here. The birding had been very rewarding, and we were whistling-duck heroes...but there would be more heroics and more lifers before the day was done.