Merry Christmas from the Arroyo Colorado

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We may not have snowy Christmases in South Texas, but our holiday season brings its own joys. 

 Bougainvillea is at its most beautiful.

White-tailed Kites bask in the winter sun.

Green Jays stop by feeders to eat peanuts and citrus.

Monarch butterflies and colorful bougainvillea are as  bright as holiday ornaments. 

While we enjoy family and food and holiday traditions, we continue to marvel at the beauty around us.  

May your holidays be warm and wonderful!

and the winner is....

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May is not only a month of migration in the yard, but also a bustling, interesting time to observe the "ordinary" year-round residents and summer nesters that are easily overlooked when so many warblers and tanagers and other bright migrants distract us. 

Of course, these birds are not really ordinary at all.  For example, nothing beats a Buff-bellied Hummingbird for beauty and spunk. This one, perched in a patch of sunlight, is as lovely as any bird could be.  We are so lucky to have multiple buff-bellieds living here in ourTexas Rio Grande Valley yard.   I've been looking for their nest--I'm certain there's one in the yard --but the nests are so tiny, I haven't found it yet.   

an unfinished Altamira Oriole nest

Some of our yard nests are more obvious than others.  The Altamira Orioles, for example,  build a nest that cannot be ignored.  It hangs down, sometimes two feet long,  from a branch high on the northwest side of an oak or ash or cedar elm tree.  A busy pair of the orioles might build one nest and then, because of nervousness about the Bronzed Cowbirds that wait for a chance to lay eggs in the nest, or just fickleness about where they want to live, abandon it and build another. 

 That's what happened again this year.  A pair worked for several days and defended their nest from the cowbirds and even other Altamiras--and then left it to be blown apart by the wind.  I don't know where the new nest is, but it's somewhere close by--maybe in the neighbor's Tepehuaje tree or maybe across the Arroyo.  I haven't gone looking for it yet.  The orioles still eat oranges and seed from the feeders many times a day, but I'm disappointed that they abandoned the nest they built in one of our oak trees.

The last day I saw the birds at their abandoned nest was the day I took the picture on the right.  It was a spat between a first-year bird and one of the two older (more orange) Altamiras that had built the nest.  These are not usually fussy or aggressive birds (though they do join in on the mobbing of the screech-owls), so I was surprised to see them tumbling onto the neighbor's driveway below the nest.

Brown-crested Flycatchers started a nest in a birdhouse in the butterfly garden.  They put a large gray feather in the box that can be seen in the entry hole.  Not all cavity-nesting birds put nesting materials in their nest cavities (the screech-owls don't; I don't think our Golden-fronted woodpeckers do--both just lay eggs on the floor that is sprinkled with wood shavings or sawdust from the excavation, if it's a natural cavity, or that we have put in there if it's a man-made box). 

BC Flycatchers put all kinds of things in their nests:  feathers, snakeskins, grass, bark.  They usually have three broods, building a new nest in a different location each time.  At least that's what they've done in our yard. 

Brown-crested Flycatcher nest:  note the extra-large feather!

Brown-crested Flycatchers are not year-round residents here.  They arrive in March or April and raise several broods.  Unfortunately, some of the eggs hatch baby cowbirds.  See this post for photos of last year's feeding frenzy when they had hungry young ones.  

Carolina Wrens are year-round residents.  This one is grooming itself while taking a break from its nestlings that were snuggled in a hanging artificial plant on my neighbor's porch.  Wrens love to nest in man-made things: pots, plants, even one time the pocket of a pair of pants another neighbor had hung on his porch railing!  

My daughter's neighbors may wonder why she still has Easter decorations beside the front door.  It's because behind the bunny's ears is a nest containing five newly-hatched Carolina Wrens!

I don't know where the Black-crested Titmice built their first nest this year, but four just-fledged titmice had lots of fun with their parents at the bird baths this morning.

The young ones have crests that are more gray than black, making them look like the closely-related Tufted Titmice that live further north.  

These guys win the prize for strange nesting places.  Last year they nested in a cow's skull that decorates the neighbor's storage house.  Other times they have nested inside  metal posts on the boat trailer and the satellite dish.  Wherever these little guys nested this time, they are now out of the nest and all over the yard.  I think they win the award for cutest babies in the yard so far this year.

A few years ago the cute baby award went hands-down to the Plain Chachalaca chicks.  Precocial, they are out of the nest on the day they are born and soon are chasing around after the adults.  (If a bird is altricial, it is born naked and helpless and stays in the nest for a while.  By the time it is out of the nest, it's hard to tell an adult bird from a young one.)

adult Plain Chachalaca in a Wild Olive tree

I've been hearing  a Chachalaca chorus every morning for a week or so,  but  I'm sure they won't nest in our yard since neighbors on both sides have outdoor cats that are too much of a danger to the little chicks. Before cats lived so close,  these interesting birds nested in the Anacua tree beside the driveway.  

Clay-colored Thrush

Award for the most exciting bird in the yard today goes to the Clay-colored Thrush that sang all morning long from the tops of several trees.   We have never had a nesting pair, though we occasionally see them in the winter.  Until a few years ago (when they were called Clay-colored Robins) they were very rare in the US.   Now they nest in several locations in the Rio Grande Valley--but until now not in our neighborhood.  The song is beautiful (similar in tone to an American Robin) and I would love to have these birds be summer nesting residents.  

As long as we're handing out awards, Cutest Couple would definitely go to the Inca Doves, one of six species of doves that nest in the neighborhood.  (Other doves that are year-round residents are Mourning, White-winged, White-tipped, Common Ground Dove, and Eurasian Collared-dove.)

The most endearing thing Inca Doves do while courting (in addition to snuggling, grooming, and cooing a soft whirl-pool, whirl-pool) is raise their wings to show the soft pink underneath.  This guy raises his left wing; 

whereupon his mate raises her right.

No spring migrating warbler, tanager, nor even Painted Bunting can rival one of our resident birds for sheer beauty:  the Green Jay wins Most Beautiful no matter what the competition.  

Green Jays are not building their nest in our yard this year, but they are gathering nesting material here. 

Look closely (or enlarge with a click) and you'll see this Green Jay has a twig grasped in his feet.  He seems to be shaping it so that it will fit the nest he is building close by.

He holds it with his feet and shapes it with his beak.

When it's to his liking he takes it in his beak and flies away to the west where his nest is. A pair of Green Jays spent one afternoon flying back and forth from our yard to one a few yards over where I presume they are building the nest in a native tree or shrub.  I can't wait until they fledge a family of lively jays that will decorate the yard later in the summer.  Last year's Green Jay family was unrivaled in beauty and joyous antics.  (See this post from last summer for the jay family doing the Green Jay dance.)


Spring migration, which was certainly spectacular this year, is drawing to a close.  The colorful parade of birds that thrill us because of the brief time we have with them may be over for the year, but the fun of watching our yard will continue as it does every summer.  I can't imagine living in a better place for backyard birdwatching.  Living here makes me feel as though I've won first place in the birders' sweepstakes.

Camera Critters: Green Jays

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If I were not already a Back Yard Bird Watcher, I'd be one after seeing a Green Jay. I never tire of watching them, listening to them, or taking their pictures.

I started writing a post a couple of days ago that I have not finished. I know, I do that a lot--which you know if you follow this blog. I am wordy, perhaps too much so. Sometimes I just want to put a few of my favorite photos out there without the words, and that's what I'm doing here. I've decided to participate in a meme called "Camera Critters" to share some of my backyard visitors -- without so many words. Watch for backyard bird shots every Saturday.

This week, enjoy the Green Jays who, with a few friends, are enjoying the orange slices I put on a feeder. (If you must have words to go with the birds, I've written about the colorful birds several times. Just click the labels list in the sidebar to find other posts about them.)

The flashy Altamira Oriole is almost as lovely as the Green Jay. Behind them is a House Sparrow.

Whenever the bigger guys aren't around, Orange-crowned Warblers fly in for a bite.

I've had fun posting my "critters." Be sure to check out other bloggers' backyard visitors at the Camera Critter blog and the links there.

Blind Spot

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Today was so lovely that I spent much of it outside.  It was just cool enough (high somewhere in the 70's) that I could sit in what is becoming one of my favorite spots:  a chair blind under the anacua tree beside the driveway.  It's a little folding lawn chair enclosed in a small attached tent with zip-out windows.  The birds can't see me--or if they do they are not alarmed--and I can get pictures of them at the birdbaths close by.  The Northern Mockingbird above was one of my first visitors. He's taking a break from defending the ripening fiddlewood berries on the shrubs near the deck.

Another bather was this stunning bird--a Yellow-throated Warbler that hung upside down on a branch of the oak tree and then flittered in to the terra cotta saucer-baths.   A common yard bird for us in the winter, it's nonetheless a special guest.

Green Jays are all over the yard, having had an apparently very successful nesting season.   Even noisier today than the Kiskadees, with buzzy croaks and snores and cheh-cheh-chehs, the jays ruled the yard.  The bather above looked unusual with its outer yellow tail feathers being the only ones in its tail! The jay below, messily eating the orange suet cake,  displays the blue/green tail that is typical. 

Green Jays don't seem to fly long distances.  They fly from tree to tree, landing near the bottom and hopping to higher branches. They follow one another, tails flashing yellow V's of those outer tail feathers,  and make a ruckus with their odd sounds.

Black-crested Titmouse

Other birds I saw at the baths from my "blind spot" included Carolina Wrens, Black-crested Titmice , a White-throated Sparrow, a Baltimore Oriole, Orange-crowned Warblers, an Ovenbird, Great-tailed Grackles, Red-winged Blackbirds, Lesser Goldfinches, and lots and LOTS of House Sparrows.


Since the wind was relatively calm today, I could hear birds all around me as I sat in the blind.  Once, as  I played my Ibird Pro app to hear the call of a White-throated Sparrow, the sound of wings and feet on the camouflage tent fabric startled me.  I think it was the titmouse pictured above but I was "blind" in my blind, at least to what was going on over my head.

While I was trying to get a picture of the warbler I heard loud familiar calls clattering overhead.  It was a sound I knew I should know--but since it was out of place in that part of the yard, I couldn't quite figure out what it was.  To get a good look at the noisy mystery birds, I would have had to climb awkwardly out of the little chair/tent contraption I was in, a  move that would scare all the birds at the baths, so I remained where I was.

Later, when my neighbor told me he had seen five large Ringed Kingfishers flying over our yards south of the houses calling loudly their wild clattering rattle, I realized what I had heard.  We usually see this largest of our three species of kingfishers on the north side of the yards, along the river, in ones or twos, but today they were flying high in a group over the front yards. Later from the deck I took a photo of one of them. He's just a dot above the palms, but that shape is unmistakable.  I missed the parade of five of the chattering giant kingfishers, but I didn't miss their chatter! 

The most contant bird sound of the day was one that might be my favorite:  the resonant rolling call of the Sandhill Cranes as they fly overhead to the fields across the way.

When I wasn't in the blind, I was on the deck that overlooks the front yard, another favorite viewing spot, especially nice since it's attached to the upstairs of the house and is convenient for viewing birds before I'm even dressed for the day--pajama birding.  This morning I was rewarded for putting niger thistle in the finch feeder by a visit from American Goldfinchs and Pine Siskins.  The siskin is especially welcome since it is not often here and because it reminds me of bird-feeding in Oklahoma when my children were young.  Whenever it snowed, and the finches were thick around the feeders, my son would stand with arms outstretched and birdseed in his upturned palms, waiting for almost-tame-with-hunger pine siskins to eat from his hands.

A Carolina Wren serenaded me from the bougainvillea nearest the deck, the reddish-brown of his breast especially bright, maybe because of the morning sun and maybe because it echoed the deep apricot of the nearby blooms.


Out by the road a small brown bird with a white eye-ring called to an echoing bird in a brasil tree.  It was too far to see just what it was though its call was distinctive.  I'll figure out what it is and maybe post that later.  For now, I'm including its picture because the background, so different from the wren's blooming backdrop, looks almost like trees in winter in northern climates.  Of course, what it's actually perching in is not winter woods, but a brush-pile of dead branches.

Our trees are still green with foliage, but the winter of my imagination (where branches are bare and snowy Pine Siskins eat from a little boy's hand) can almost be seen in this picture.

Increase

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Late summer is a time of abundance.  Where there were two or three Green Jays at the feeders, there are now six.  Where there were a few butterflies basking in the sun or flitting from lantana to plumbago,  there are now dozens.  Four Kiskadees have become eight; eight White-winged Doves have become sixteen. One or two Buff-bellied Hummingbirds at a feeder have become a swarm of Ruby-throated migrants buzzing like bees around any available nectar.

A few days ago I heard a distinctive Green Jay racket. Out on the fishing dock, a family of six of these bright, cheerful, and noisy natives of South Texas lined up on the railing. Four of them were probably newly fledged; all were excited.  Ruffling their feathers and bobbing up and down in a funny dance, they were belting out the  strangest clicks and whistles.

I love these birds and never tire of watching their noisy antics.  When they fly into a tree, they alight on a low branch and hop their way to the top.  Though I don't put out their seed at regular times, they always discover it within about five minutes. With the sudden increase from two to six jays, I'll have to increase my supply of corn, peanuts, and bird seed.

Migrants  that disappeared in late spring are back as fall migrants, bookending summer with bright color and enlivening what had become a very lazy time in the yard.


Black and White Warblers, Yellow Warblers, Prothonatary Warblers, Hooded Warblers, and Canada Warblers began visiting oak trees and bird baths last week.  Summer Tanagers and Indigo Buntings added a splash of color as did migrant Baltimore and Bullock's Orioles that joined the summering Hooded Orioles and native Altamira Orioles. Though not as brightly colored in fall as in spring, these are still pretty spectacular birds. 

A little empidonax flycatcher entertained me all one afternoon catching small insects above the driveway.  I usually don't presume to distinguish between Willow and Alder Flycatchers, identifying them all as just Traill's Flycatchers, the name these two almost identical birds used to be called, but this guy sang and called a number of times, giving me a definitive clue.  Consulting the voice recordings on the Ibird Explorer Pro app of my Iphone, I'm pretty sure this was a Willow Flycatcher.  Its mostly three-syllable song and whit call  was convincing to me, anyway.  For a while earlier in the day, I had wanted to say Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, but the lack of distinct eye ring made me decide this was a Traill's with a lot of color. 

Tropical Kingbirds have been singing in the backyard.  They fly from across the arroyo in the early mornings and announce their identity with song.  The otherwise identical Couch's Kingbirds are more often in the front yard where they nested earlier in the summer.  These look-alikes are native residents unlike the Eastern and Western Kingbirds that have been migrating through.  Great Crested Flycatchers (right) are similar to the Couch's/Tropical Kingbirds and in some ways to the  Brown-crested Flycatchers but with a deeper yellow belly and more rusty color on their tails.  There's an abundance of the latter this week, probably birds that nested farther north as well as our yard nesters.


Meanwhile, a little  Screech-owl sat unperturbed in the pine tree, enduring constant scolding by what seemed like a treeful of wrens and titmice.

I think even the person least inclined to anthropomorphism would call this a "wise old owl."  Or at least a curious and patient one.

Birds and bird activity are not the only increase in the yard.  Butterflies are thick among trees, shrubs and flowers; and blooms are abundant even as rain diminishes.  These three Giant Swallowtails were in a lineup of ten on a  fiddlewood shrub.  I would have needed a wide lens to get all the rest of them in the picture!

Another illustration of burgeoning life around the yard can be seen in the photos above of a Queen butterfly and a Queen caterpillar, both on milkweed plants.  Look closely--do you see what I am talking about? It's not the butterfly or the caterpillar.   That's right--the tiny round white specks are eggs! Click on the photos to enlarge them if you can't find the eggs. 

 I've cropped and enlarged this photo so that you can see the egg better.   The eggs are actually ridged, something my maturing eyes can't tell,  but the photo shows.  This one was on a yellow milkweed (butterfly weed) that is not native to south Texas but it grows well here and spreads easily from seeds that burst out of pods, and with the help of silky white filaments, float on the wind until they lodge in another garden or roadside. 

I have taken many, many butterfly photos in the last couple of weeks and then spent hours looking over guide books trying to identify them.  I used to classify butterflies in such categories as "yellow ones" "white ones" and "little skipperly things."  Now with the help of my camera and guide book (I like Kaufman's because of the maps and indication of size) I'm doing a better job, but my learning curve is slow.  A camera really helps me identify these guys, as it does with other insects and dragonflies.  I think my next blog will be devoted to the various butterflies and dragonflies I've been able to put a label on.

Speaking of increase (and also of insects), I have more photos of the spider I blogged about yesterday.  In the late afternoon sun, it is obvious why this spider is called a Silver Argiope. Notice that the little mate I worried about yesterday was back today, snuggled closer.  I laugh whenever I see this unlikely pair.   There I go anthropomorphizing again. 

Our population of Silver Argiopes has doubled:  today I found another one not far from the first.  Its web is also on the side of the house but separated from the other by a bump-out for the water heater.  This spider is only about half the size of the first one and not so spectacular.

But isn't the shadow cast by this smaller Argiope amazing?  Though the web's stabilimentum (zigzaggy web things) can't be seen well on the web, they are obvious in the shadow.

I'll keep watching these fascinating spiders and learning more about them.  And about the other creatures around the yard.  What's really increasing is my attention.   I'm sure the spiders have always been here.