Water Works

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Whoever wrote that little ditty about April showers didn't live in South Texas.  We do have the spring flowers (those that require little moisture), but we haven't had a drop of rain.  And a drop is about all we had in March.  Add to that temperatures already approaching 100 (and at least once this week exceeding) and winds of about 30 mph day and night (gusting to 60), and you get really dry conditions.

That's why all the avian action is staying pretty close to water sources these days--- like this  Northern Kiskadee drinking from a bird bath that's just across the driveway from the Ebony tree where its nest is under construction.  A copper dripping tube keeps water moving in this bath and attracts birds by sound as well as sight.  (Moving water is key to busy baths.  Some of our dripper systems are as simple a plastic jug with a hole in it suspended over a saucer.)

Green Jays also stay close to baths, dipping in several times a day.

I've been a little worried that the Screech-owls' nesting in a box very close to this particular bird bath might deter the bathing, but it apparently hasn't.  One bird or several are almost always there.

Except for a while yesterday morning when this bather took his turn: 

 A Cooper's Hawk always clears baths and feeders for awhile.  Not long after his drink, the hawk managed to snag a Red-winged Blackbird out of the air,  leaving only a feather or two settling in the dust of the driveway.   

I actually don't begrudge the hawk a blackbird or two--we still have hundreds!  I know many backyard watchers up north are still awaiting the Red-winged grain-devourers as early harbingers of spring, but I am really tired of them here.  One or two seem always to be scouting for the moment I fill the feeders, and before I get back to the garage, a few hundred are in the yard.  Their numbers are decreasing but not quick enough for me.  I love them for their beauty and I love them two at a time, but I just can't afford to keep feeding the hordes.  The third bird with the two red-winged raiders in the photo to the right is a Bronzed Cowbird.  They have shown up in the yard this week, ready to pester the orioles as soon as nest-building begins. 

The main water feature of the backyard is of course the Arroyo Colorado, a smaller river when it flows through Harlingen and a larger dredged shipping channel when its mixture of salt water and fresh water rises and falls with the tides as it passes our back yard.  Herons, egrets, terns, night-herons, gulls, ospreys, pelicans, cormorants, and many other water birds follow the arroyo, wading along the edge and resting in the trees along the banks. 

One of my favorite river birds is the Black-bellied Whistling Duck, the guy in the photo on the left.  Early this morning a group of eighteen Black-bellied Whistling Ducks landed on our dock and the roof of our neighbor's, waiting to share a feeder with the blackbirds. They'll do this each morning and evening for a while.  Then we'll have fewer at a time until the nearest nesting pair start bringing their large families back to the feeders.  

Another favorite bird that is always on the arroyo is the Night Heron, mostly Black-crowned but sometimes Yellow-crowned.  

The bright red eye of the Black-crowned Night-Heron is sometimes the first thing I spot when the bird hides in the oak tree.

First year night-herons are brown with large white spots. 

The long neck of this young night-heron makes me think it might be a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron rather than a Black-crowned one, though I'm not sure.  It just struck me as different, I took a photo, and later it occurred to me that maybe it was different,  I think the spots are a little smaller, also, another field mark of the very similar BCNH. 

Last week an adult Yellow-crowned Night Heron fished across the river.  Adults are easy to tell apart, even when the YCNH is scrunching its neck down in a posture more like the BCNH.

If it weren't for the water that draws in the birds, we would probably not see many birds on these hot windy days.  The wind is definitely keeping migrants from stopping by, though I have seen a couple of  Hooded Warblers at the baths.  

Hooded Orioles have paired up and like to bathe together.  Here are a male and female in a Mexican Olive tree just prior to a dip in the water-filled saucer below the tree. 

So that's the news of the week from our dry, hot, windy yard.  I'll keep filling up the baths and turning on the drippers in the front yard and the river will keep flowing past the back.  That will bring in the birds and all of us will be happy.  Unless a hungry Cooper's Hawk snags another black bird.  In the natural world not everybird  can live happily everafter.

Homecomings and Homebuilding

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I was almost right about the Hooded Oriole's return.  He came "home"  just one day later than last year.  Here he is in one of the palm trees in the backyard, not far from where a pair of the birds nested last summer.  Actually several pairs nested last year, as every year, in our palms and those of yards nearby.  Their small beautiful nests are made of long palm fibers, like little golden purses, that are usually nestled under a palm frond. So far this spring I've seen only one male at a time and no females.  It appeared first late in the day at a front yard bath, just as it did last year, and was in the Bottlebrush tree early the next morning.

Below is a photo of a similarly-colored  Altamira Oriole in the Bottlebrush.  Here in Texas, Hooded Orioles are orange like the Altamiras, though I think they are more yellow or gold in other locations.   The two species are sometimes confused by casual observers. Note the difference in the shape of the black on the head--more like a mask on the Altamira Oriole and coming straight down just behind the eye of the Hooded, forming the orange "hood." In addition, the Altamira Oriole has an orange wing patch high on the shoulder and the Hooded does not.

When the male Hooded Orioles arrive home, they seem most interested at first in bathing and eating.  When the females follow in a few days (this is the usual pattern), oriole-watching gets more interesting as the males crisscross the yard and show off from every tree. Home-building quickly follows their homecoming as they pair up and start finding nesting sites.

 My favorite oriole photo from last spring is this one in which a male is spreading his tail almost as if imitating the palm frond on which he's perched (and where his mate will build a nest after his antics successfully get her attention).

Tail-fanning seems to be a popular way of attracting attention in the bird world.  Here's a photo of a Long-billed Thrasher showing off to his mate a few weeks ago.  I had taken a picture of what I thought was just one thrasher in the Bottlebrush tree.  I hadn't even seen the dancer with the fancy tail, but there it was when I reviewed the photo.  I love photos I just shoot randomly that turn out later to be really interesting.

Long-billed Thrashers

Curve-billed Thrasher

We have two species of thrashers that live year-round in the yard,  both virtuoso singers.  Long-billed thrashers are more musical, their phrases a little slower,  but I find the Curve-billed Thrasher's song extremely interesting.  The male that lives in our yard all year began singing in January, very quietly but constantly as though practicing for the "real" full-throated singing that began in February.  I've written about this "whisper song" before.  (I've also written about Buff-bellied Hummingbirds and Altamira Orioles singing so quietly you have to be very close to hear them.) When the thrasher sings his quiet song, he doesn't open his beak much, if at all, but his throat moves. I'll hear a song that sounds as if a singing bird is far away, and then find the persistent singer in a nearby Hackberry tree. His usual song is like the whisper song in quality and phrasing but is very much louder.

Curve-billed Thrashers seem always to be doing something interesting.  

Here one is taking a sun bath on a  sun-warmed stepping stone.

Here one bends low to sip water spraying from a dripper hose.

And here he looks especially distinctive perched on a post.  

Curved-bill thrashers have more rounded markings on their breasts than Long-billed, and of course their color is a more muted brown.  Both have a distinctive long, dark bill,  and orange eyes.  Our yard, a messy one with unraked leaves and brushy unkempt tangles of native shrubs, is a perfect place for them to thrash around in, throwing leaf litter and dirt all around. 

Yesterday I thought perhaps a Brown Thrasher had stopped by our yard.  Once one spent a whole winter with us.  Yesterday's bird appeared redder than the usual dark brown of the very similar Long-billed.   But closer looks showed me the gray face and darker bill of the Long-billed after all,  looking especially bright and reddish in the sun. 

Both pairs of thrashers are beginning nest-building activities,  though neither has settled on a specific location.   I think the Long-billed pair will nest in a Cedar Elm in the front yard and the Curved-billed couple are experimenting by sticking  thorny twigs  in various locations in the back.  Curve-billed Thrashers seem to not need such brushy locations.  They have built in past years in just about every medium sized tree in the yard.  Last year their first nest was in a Yucca and the second in a Brasil.  One year they even built a nest in a Purple Martin house that the martins no longer liked because trees had grown too near it. 

Starlings are already nesting in a cavity in the dead cottonwood.  I don't begrudge these invaders a spot since there are about a half-dozen other cavities for the woodpeckers and titmice to choose from.   A Screech-owl is at least roosting if not nesting in a new owl box by the drive.  We put the box up just a couple of weeks ago to replace one bees had taken over last summer.  It's probably too late for this guy to nest, but he sure likes sitting in the box. 

He doesn't, however, like me to walk past his door.  That's what my granddaughters call the stink eye.  

I've added to the year's bird list (see sidebar) but I'm not sure it's accurate yet. I'm still tweeting new year birds on Twitter, but I don't always remember to tweet every one.  I'll work on my list tomorrow and then keep adding more as migrants return home or pass through.  I think the list is a little behind last year's at this time.

 Two days ago I was very excited to see an Aplamado Falcon fly over the house. Typically, I didn't have my camera with me.   This is only the second time I've seen the falcon in (or over) the yard.  The first time was about ten years ago when two perched on an electric pole in September.  (We live not too far from Laguna Atascosa NWR where several pairs have nested successfully after a reintroduction program by the Peregrine Fund.)

Spring arrived officially a few days ago.   The moon over the arroyo on the first night of spring was a Supermoon, named because it was nearer the earth than it had been in 18 years.  A moon rising over the water is always breathtaking, but this one was especially ... well, super.  I wish I could have captured a picture of the Great Blue Heron that flew along the river across the moon's light.  

I'll try to blog often to report on our  homecomings and nest-building.   Spring is super everyday in the Rio Grande Valley. 

On Catching Up (and Looking Back)

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Sometimes I feel like the osprey in this photo--not the one with the fish, but the one chasing ineffectually.  I'm not flying as gracefully as this bird, of course, but I'm trying to catch up. The last time I posted was the day before St. Valentine's Day and here it is St. Patrick's Day!  This post won't have a real theme--it'll just be catch-up time.

When I started blogging at the beginning of 2010, my objective was to write something that would help me keep track of a year in the life of the yard.  I had already tried that with various journals and lists, but found they were too easy to misplace--and you can't keep track of details if the list you keep them on is lost.    Even though I don't post as often as I had intended, my blog is always "there" (somewhere in cyberspace) and  I'm finding it really fun to look  back over last year's posts.  Today, as I read over last year's posts for February and March, I was reminded of some interesting observations and found myself comparing them to this year's.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, I took a photo of pelicans  fishing out back in the Arroyo. One of them was the red-pouched form of the Brown Pelican, a subspecies usually found in California.  As I browsed the blog's posts from  a year ago,  I  saw that I was speculating then about how many of our Texas pelicans are this form,  but I couldn't find an answer anywhere.  Trying to figure it out for myself, I counted pelicans as we took a boat trip up the river.  Today I read in the TOS Handbook of Texas Birds (a book I didn't have last year) that about 10-15 percent have the red gular pouch.  I think that's an overestimation as far as the birds here on the South Texas coast--or at least in the Arroyo--are concerned.  Last year's effort to count pelicans and note the ones with the red rather than the grayish pouch made me conclude that more like 2% were the California subspecies. 

Another  thing I noticed after looking at last year's posts (see the links here and here) is that there are not nearly as many Brown Pelicans on the river as there were a year ago.  I hope that has nothing to do with the oil spill in the gulf.  The TOS handbook says Brown Pelicans are not known to breed along the lower Texas Coast.  I think they actually do breed on some of the spoil banks in the Laguna Madre.  If it's not windy tomorrow maybe we can retrace the boat trip we took looking for and counting pelicans last March.  It isn't scientific, but  it is interesting to compare one year's observations with another, and thanks to my Arroyo Colorado Riverblog, it's easy to do that.

Continuing with my catch-up post:  I'm on the lookout for our migrant Hooded Orioles.  Checking the blog for the date of last year's first appearance, I see it's March 18--that's tomorrow.  I can't wait!  The bottlebrush tree is starting to bloom, ready for the nectar-loving birds.  Today three Altamira Orioles flew across the yard and into the tree. For a second I thought maybe the Hoodeds were back.  By non-scientific observation, I know that the same birds migrate back to our yard year-after-year: we once had a male Hooded Oriole with a deformed beak, easy to recognize as it returned for at least three summers.  (I was especially glad to see it each spring, as I feared the deformity would make survival difficult-- but apparently it didn't, or at least not for those three years.)  

A Fuertes's Oriole ( formerly Ochre Oriole) also returned to the yard two summers.  I'm sure it was the same bird since it had  been seen in the United States only once before (late 1800s)--and what are the chances two different Fuertes Orioles would show up in the same yard two years in a row?    Every spring I look for the beautiful Ochre Oriole, but it did not return for a third year and hasn't been seen north of the Mexican border since.  This year, though, I have something almost as good--a lovely watercolor by bird artist F.P. (Tony) Bennett, who  saw it in our yard and has painted it for us. We just got the watercolor back from the framer's today.  Tony's depiction does the bird justice--a really beautiful creature. (To see some of Tony's other paintings, see this link: http://www.fpbennett.com/ )

Speaking of orioles, I'm  looking forward to the Altamira Oriole's yearly magnificent feat of nest-building. Looking back over the blog, I see  it was mid April of last year that they built their first nest.  Unfortunately, they abandoned that one in our Oak tree and built another in a Tepeguahee tree three doors to the west of us.  That nesting was apparently successful--two first-year Altamiras joined two adults all winter in the yard, eating oranges, sipping hummingbird nectar, feeding on aloe blooms, and even eating seeds from the feeders.  Above is one of the young birds.  Note the pale back and tail, and contrast it with the black of the adult below.  Male and female look similar in this species of oriole, unlike the Hooded Orioles whose female is much like the female Ochre Oriole in Tony's watercolor.  

Since I'm trying to catch up with a whole month of yard activities, I've got lots more to show and tell. I also want to tell about a couple of really neat experiences I had away from the yard.  But for now I'll close this post and continue writing tomorrow.  I want to get up early in the morning for some backyard birding.

Will the Hooded Orioles show up tomorrow?  I'll be watching.  

Summer Homes

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Another favorite yard bird made it home for the summer.  Yesterday morning when I looked out in the yard, Brown-crested Flycatchers were up early checking out the nest box where they've nested for years. But today, they had claimed a different bird house very close to the deck.

The bird in the photo above looks pretty dapper, crest under control, but my husband usually remarks that these guys look like they are having a bad-hair day  In this photo that usually unruly crest looks pretty smooth, like it's had a good conditioning treatment.

All day (well, when I wasn't counting warblers and orioles--more on that later)  I watched the flycatchers building their nest.  They had large "beak-fulls" of grass and other plant material and worked at stuffing it into the house. (One time when cleaning out an old nest  I found a piece of snakeskin in it--but it appears they are building this one of dried grass and small twigs.)

I wonder if they chose their spot too quickly.  In the picture here you can see their house hanging from a fiddlewood shrub/tree (middle of photo) that is very close to the deck where I spend a lot of time.  I spent most of the day today walking in the yard and driveway,  looking at the fabulous migrants that were making rest-stops here, so I wasn't on the deck.  When I did sit out there briefly, I think the flycatchers were disturbed that I was so close.  If I'd thought they would use this box, I wouldn't have put it so close to the house. We'll see how it works out.

Nest update:  The Altamira Orioles' nest is completed, an amazing feat of engineering.  I am trying not to look at it too often, though that's hard since it's so fascinating.  It hangs down from one of our Live Oak trees over the driveway next door to the west.  The house there is for sale starting tomorrow (the neighbor's house, not the Altamira Oriole's) so there will probably start being a little more human activity that I hope won't upset the birds.  (I am nervous about the house being for sale and hope that the new buyers will be bird-friendly. If I were wealthy I'd buy the beautiful lot and trees myself.)
The Curve-billed Thrashers have a nest in the yucca (Spanish Dagger) at the end of the driveway of the neighbors to our east.  I think theirs is completed.  I don't know if there are eggs yet and of course I won't get close enough to look.  Both birds are always close by.
The Kiskadee nest in the Ebony tree is complete.  It is just a tree or two away from the Altamira Oriole's nest.
After reporting on several suspected nest sites for the Black-crested Titmice  I can now say that I have no idea where they are actually nesting!
We have two pairs of Hooded Orioles that appear to be building nests in the Palm trees though I'm not sure which ones.  I still see them visiting all of them.  I think one pair is building in a tree near the road and one in a tree on the river side of the house.

Today was an absolutely wonderful day for watching migrants.  In fact, it was an eight-warbler, four-oriole day!  The Mexican Olive tree is in full bloom and is filled with orioles.  I had worried that the orioles wouldn't stop by this year since our Bottlebrush trees bloomed a month ago, but the Mexican Olives make up for the faded Bottlebrushes!

Here are Orchard Orioles feeding on the blooms.  The first one is a first year male.  Note its green head, black face, and the two spots of red on its breast. The yellow will be replaced by brick red in the adult and the head will be all black.  The photo of the adult Orchard Oriole doesn't show off the bird so much as the Mexican Olive tree (Anacahuita) with its white funnel-shaped flowers and soft velvety leaves.

 The female Hooded and Orchard Orioles look very much alike.  I use "context clues" to tell me which is which.  For example, the one that is eating from the olive tree was probably an Orchard Oriole because that's where the Orchard Orioles were.  The second female oriole photo is most likely a Hooded.  She was in the Retama tree near the Palm where they are nesting. She is interested in nesting and checking out the palm trees; the female Orchards are interested in eating for a day or two before resuming migration.

I was hoping today would be a five oriole day, but the Bullock's Oriole we saw Thursday was not still around.  So Altamira, Hooded, Orchard, and Baltimore graced the yard today.  But I'll take a four-oriole day any time!

What can be more fabulous than a four-oriole day?  An eight-warbler day! 

Before we left town last Thursday we had seen very few migrating warblers in the yard.  I knew from Texbirds, however, that birders were seeing them on the Island,  so when we returned home on Sunday evening, I  headed for the yard.  By the time I reached the end of the drive, a  Kentucky Warbler had flown in for a bath  and a Blue-winged Warbler flitted across the driveway.  A good omen, I thought.

But yesterday, no warblers!  It was a good day in lots of other ways (we added nonwarblers to the 2010 yard list:  Chimney Swifts and Common Nighthawks flew over the yard; a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, black and white tail streaming, flew into the smaller brasil tree, home perhaps for the summer; and the  Brown-Crested Flycatchers arrived to start their summer work of raising a family.)


 Today more than made up for the warblerless frustration of yesterday.  We had eight warbler species by the time the afternoon was over.  Of course most were too high in the trees or too skitterish to capture in photos, but I can see them each clearly in my mind's photos (which are never out of focus or underexposed).

A Northern Parula flitted into the fiddlewood behind one of the birdbaths.  Its green back and yellow breast with that reddish band made  a colorful spot in the cloudy grayness of the morning.  A Yellow-throated Warbler popped up in my binoculars as I was scanning  a palm leaf for a Hooded Oriole. A Black and White Warbler scurried up and down the tallest oak tree in the front-yard bird garden, along with a Cerulean Warbler that I thought for awhile was another black and white.  It was high in the tree, silhouetted against an overcast but brightening sky.  (That's it in the photo to the right.  Too bad its cerulean blue back isn't showing, but the white belly and throat with the side stripes and neckband are nice.)   A  Worm-eating Warbler  scurried around in the leaves by the saucer bath and then across the driveway.  A Yellow Warbler and a Blue-winged Warbler busily searched for insects in a tangle of Esperanza and Mexican Caesalpinia trees in the bird garden. A Canada Warbler skittered in the tree tops.



By the time the day was drawing to a close, the skies had cleared.  Look how the evening sun illuminates the crests of the Cedar Waxwings.  Someone farther north is waiting for them to return to nest in their summer home.

Nature's People

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Just in case you think all we have in the yard are birds, or in case you are tired of photos of orioles, I'll begin with a beautiful fellow I found in the neighbor's yard yesterday morning, a Texas Indigo Snake.  Moments before this photo was taken, the snake was winding its full four or five feet at a leisurely pace along a flower bed and water sprinkler.  But  when I rushed over with my camera, it quickly slithered away under a plumbago shrub against a fence. Like poet  Emily Dickinson's  snake in "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" :  

"it  wrinkled,  and  was  gone."

I thought I'd been foiled again, but I took this picture anyway, aiming the camera back in the shadows.  Surprisingly, the photo turned out okay.  You can see the deep indigo blue of its back end coiled up by the lighter face with the little whisker-like marks radiating out from the eye.  I love these creatures and think they are among the most beautiful in the yard.  I've seen pictures of them eating rattlesnakes,  and I'm always ready to tell that to people who declare they hate snakes and have guns to kill them with (unfortunately I've heard that said a surprising number of times around here). I don't think Dickinson would kill a snake, but even she who can describe one so well says they make her feel "zero to the bone."  She's one of my favorite poets, but I'll disagree with her on that.

Now to the orioles!  I've spent the weekend watching  Hooded Orioles that returned just a few days ago.  At first glance they look like the resident Altamira Orioles.  When we first moved to the Rio Grande Valley and I had never before seen either species, I confused the two.  The Altamira is a little larger, a relative field mark not too helpful if  the two birds aren't side by side.  In the photo to the left here is a Hooded Oriole and to the right an Altamira Oriole. You can see two distinguishing features easily -- the Altamira has an orange shoulder patch notching a little "v" in the top front of the black wing, and the Hooded does not.  That's probably the most helpful field mark, the one a field guide would point an arrow at.  The shape of the black facial patch is different, too.  Some field guides say the Altamira has a mask because the black goes from the beak back to the eye and is narrower on the throat. On the Hooded Oriole the black goes down from the eye, covering more of the face and throat--see what I mean?

If you look closely at the Hooded Oriole on the left, you can see that the beak is slightly decurved, or pointed downward, another distinguishing mark, but it's the orange shoulder patch that I always look for first.  Of course, once you have welcomed these guys to your home and hung around with them, you know them from a distance just like you know each of your grandkids running  towards you,  even from way across the park.

Using those two field marks, you could answer the photo quiz from my last post, right?  And a special "GOOD JOB!" to  Caleb, my smart grandson who may have also had help from his equally smart younger siblings.  (Not his baby sister, though--she hasn't looked through a pair of binoculars yet,  but just a few more months and she'll be birding with the rest of us.) I think most of you identified the orioles correctly-- Orioles A and B in the quiz were Hooded Orioles and Oriole C was an Altamira Oriole, all eating nectar in the bottlebrush tree in our yard. (If you're not sure what I'm talking about, see the post below that I wrote a few days ago.)

The Hooded Orioles were busy this weekend checking out the prime real estate in the neighborhood-- the tall Washingtonian Palm Trees where they  make nests every summer.  Here's a photo of one male that perched on a palm above our deck yesterday afternoon and called out "wheat!" over and over.  He was repeatedly answered by two other "wheat!"s  from two other palm trees.  This went on for quite some time. 

I don't know if other male orioles were answering the calls.  I'm assuming a female Hooded Oriole was within hearing distance, since the male I watched was being such a show-off.   At one point he fanned his tail, making it look in miniature like the palm frond he perched on. I hope this photo shows up well enough for you to see the black tail feathers---it  was extremely neat to watch.  (Click on the photo to enlarge it.)  

Today I finally saw a female Hooded Oriole,  first in a shrub near the palm where she looked very lemony yellow below, more greenish yellow on her back.  Then later I photographed a male and female together eating an orange half.  Unlike the Altamira Orioles whose males and females look pretty much alike, the male and female Hooded Orioles are distinct.  Aren't they a cute couple?

I'm still on the lookout for migrants,  but so far most of our birds at the baths and feeders have been birds that show up here only in the winter.  The Gray Catbird is still here and the Black and White, Orange-crowned,  and Yellow-rumped Warblers. This weekend's new birds for 2010 were  a Yellow-throated Warbler and an American Robin, both brief winter and early spring visitors.

April begins in a couple of days, a fabulous birding month here at home.  I love to see the exciting birds that pass through for a day or two--I'm still fluttering about last week's close encounter with a Swallow-tailed Kite--but I also especially love the ones that stay awhile and  build nests, raise young. I like to get to know them, not merely tick them off my list. I understand why Emily Dickinson refers to them as  people:

"Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality"

         (click this link to read Dickinson's "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass")

I don't share Dickinson's view of a snake that made her feel such a cold uneasiness, but I too know "nature's people." I look forward to the just beginning nesting season when I am a nature watcher and not just a lister.  I think getting to know nature does transport us to a better world.  We could sometimes use a little more "cordiality."

They're Ba-ack!

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So far this year our Yard List has been woefully--and a little strangely--short on ducks. For a while in January a single Ruddy Duck paddled around occasionally out in the Arroyo, and a few days ago a couple of Mottled Ducks flew by -- and that's been it.

But today my favorite duck came home:  our South Texas specialty, the Black-Bellied Whistling Duck.  I heard my neighbor call from her porch, "The ducks are back!" and I ran out to see.  First there was just one of these funny-looking guys standing on the top railing of the deck above our boat lift, and then another joined it.  They flew across the deck, feet dragging and heads down in that funny way they fly for short distances, and peered down at the bird feeder they knew was there, having been daily visitors last summer.  It seemed pretty obvious these two were returning home and not just stumbling upon  a random feeder. Look at the photo above.  These guys know what they're looking for.

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are really cool ducks. I love the way their white eye rings make them look wide-eyed and curious.  Those bright pink long legs and orange beaks seem cheerful and comical, and the coloring of their plumage is really quite beautiful:  the chestnut brown backs, the black bellies and tails, the chestnut brown on top of the head and along the back of the neck, the white patches on the wings when they fly.

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are year-round residents here in the Rio Grande Valley,  but I don't know exactly where "ours" (okay, these are wild free creatures, but I might be a tad possessive of some of them)  hang out all winter. At least one field guide suggests that they may move short distances south for the winter months from the northern part of their range, which would include Texas.

These ducks are very gregarious--see how social they look in the picture above, as if working the room, asking each other how their winter was.  Last summer we began noticing, as we drove through Los Fresnos, the town south of here, that a huge constituency of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks were always gathered on one particular roof at the town's main intersection.  They looked like they were having a large but friendly town hall meeting.

I think it's possible that the dozen or so ducks that gathered daily at the feeder late last summer were all one family because at the first of the summer, it had been dinner for two. My field guides tell me that they lay  as many as 16 eggs, usually in a tree cavity, that the young tumble out of the nest after only two days,  and that they remain with their parents for up to eight weeks.  This year I'm going to note details such as how many juveniles are at the feeder and how many adults.  (One of my purposes in writing this blog is to keep track of what's happening with our birds and wildlife so I won't have such a vague recollection next year. There's just so much to see here that I haven't kept track very well in the past.  All that is changing in 2010--I'm determined to keep blogging all the details of our yard birds! Maybe its scientific curiosity and maybe it's just nosiness, like keeping track of what the neighbors are doing and forming hypotheses about their comings and goings!)

As we continued to watch our newly-returned visitors this morning, one duck hop/flew down to the feeder,  and along with half a dozen Red-winged Blackbirds ate mixed seeds and corn.  The other one  stayed on the railing, standing on one foot.  My neighbor, who was watching with me, just as delighted as I that they had returned, wondered if something was wrong with its leg---but I knew it  just preferred, in its whistling-duck way,  to stand for a while on one leg.

Five minutes later a group of about twenty Black-bellied Whistling Ducks flew east along the river, whistling of course, until they spotted the original two and circled back around, landing on the roof of the neighbor's deck.

The ducks are not the only returning birds.  Scissor-tailed Flycatchers perched on the electric wires today and Purple Martins soared over martin houses to the east and the west of us.  I saw the first Barn Swallow of the year this afternoon and another male Hooded Oriole was on the Bottlebrush tree -- two Hooded and two Altamiras at the same time.  Now that's colorful! 

Our bottlebrush tree (also known as callistemon) is sometimes literally filled with birds when it is in bloom.  Last fall I counted five male Orchard Orioles, six male Baltimore Orioles, one male Hooded Oriole and three female orioles of undetermined species  at one time in the neighbor's small bottlebrush,  which I can see as I sit on my front deck.  (Though most of our plants are native, the bottlebrush is not--it's native to Australia.  I've checked lists of invasive nonnatives and can't find anything that identifies it as invasive in Texas.  One internet source questions its invasiveness in California, though, so I need to find out a little more.)

When you look at the oriole photos below, you'll see bottlebrush blooms.  They look  like brushes you'd use to clean a hummingbird feeder, don't they?   The little spots of yellow at the ends of the "brush bristles" are pollen.  Yesterday I saw a yellow-faced brown bird on the tree and was startled until it dawned on me that I was looking at a House Sparrow that had been sticking its beak in the blooms, getting a face full of pollen. (Looking for insects?  Sampling the nectar?  A Red-winged Blackbird was doing the same thing.  I'm not sure what they were eating.)


 A couple of days ago,  I took photos of orioles feeding on nectar in the backyard bottlebrush.  I had promised a good photo when I had good light.  Getting a photo was harder than I first thought it would be because, as it turned out, there were two orioles in the tree!  Can you tell which of them is a male Hooded Oriole and which is an Altamiras?

We'll call this first one (in the photo above)  Oriole A.  Look closely at the pattern of the black on its face, its bill shape, its wing.

We'll call this one Oriole B.  Is it the same species of oriole as A?

We'll say this is Oriole C.  Remember to look at the top of the wings.  (I talked about how these orioles are a little different in an earlier blog.)


Okay, identify the oriole in each photo! 

Can you see why I was getting confused as I tried to take a picture of our newly-returned Hooded Oriole--and didn't know an Altamira Oriole was feasting in the same tree?

Study the differences in the two orioles 
(if you are my grandchildren, that's your assignment!)  and write your answers in the comments.  I'll tell you the right ones  in a day or two.


I love orioles and could watch them all day.  Tomorrow I'm going to try to take a photo from a video I have of a Fuertes's Oriole that spent two summers with us. (I know that will not be a good photo, but I am going to try anyway.)   It was a beautiful bird, like an Orchard Oriole but tawny gold or "old gold" or ochre  where the Orchard Oriole is brick red. (My old field guide to Mexican birds calls it the Ochre Oriole for its exquisite coloring.) Quite a few people down here saw it in our yard,  but no one took a still photo as far as I know.  That was ten years ago before so many people had cameras that could focus in on shy birds singing in treetops or splashing in a distant bath.  I've been wishing I had a photo.  A few weeks ago I looked at the Texas bird committee's website, and saw  a photo link to the Fuertes's Oriole (which so far is still considered a distinct subspecies of the Orchard Oriole), and I was excited thinking I'd click and find a photo taken of this bird that has been seen in the U.S. only a couple of times.  But when you click the link,  you see a dead museum specimen that was taken--which means shot and killed--in Brownsville a century ago.  Thank goodness we have cameras to shoot with now. Anyway, looking at that sad photo of a dead bird made me wish I could have taken a photo of the vividly alive and beautiful little oriole that sang from the treetops in our yard those two summers.  (I have seen on the internet a copy of the painting Luis Agassiz Fuertes did of the bird,  which he discovered in Mexico. I'll see if I can find it again and link to it from here.)

I thought this would be a short post about the Whistling Ducks.  But it's hard for me not to go on and on  about orioles.  I'm the eternal optimist and keep looking for a Fuertes's Oriole every April.  Both years it was here, it arrived on April 16.  If it comes, you will hear it  from wherever you are.  You'll hear a crazy woman shrieking to the universe, "It's ba-ack!"