Ducks in a Row

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I'm not particularly organized and seldom pay attention to detail, being a big-picture type of person--but no one can say I don't have my ducks in a row!

I know I said I'd get photos posted of  those tanagers and grosbeaks and buntings (oh, my!), but these Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are just too cute to not post them first.  Every evening they line up on the deck above our boat lift, waiting for a neighbor to put out their seed, whistling in their  Black-bellied-Whistling-Duck way.  I think they are adorable.  They seem to be paired up now and may be looking for nesting sites again in neighborhood washingtonian palms.

 I meant to put up a duck box for them this year but I just never got that done.  I did buy a  new screech-owl box, though, and it's occupied, though no sign yet of hatchlings.  And this evening a Brown-crested Flycatcher fluttered around a new birdhouse in the backyard. So that's two new avian houses I managed to to put up in time for this spring.

I'll keep reporting on our whistling duck activities as the season goes on and I get myself better organized.  That is, when I get my ducks in a row.

"for every Bird a Nest"

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The story of the yard in June is always a story of nesting.  I haven't been outside as much in the last two weeks as I was during migration (the heat index is over a hundred by late morning) but I have been looking out the windows, and even from limited views the nesters can be seen going to and fro or overlooking their nests from a high branch.

Some of these busy nesters remind me of a poem by Emily Dickinson in which she wonders why ("wherefore" in her archaic 19th century English) a little wren continues its search for the perfect nest spot, even though there's one in every tree:

For every Bird a Nest --
Wherefore in timid quest
Some little Wren goes seeking round --

Wherefore when boughs are free --
Households in every tree --
Pilgrim be found?   
. . . .

(click the link above for the whole poem)

Watching a pair of Brown-crested Flycatchers, I'm thinking the same thing.  Why continue the exhausting quest in search of the perfect spot (as though on some sort of pilgrimage) when there are perfectly fine nesting spots everywhere and every bird seems to be guaranteed one.  Why all the fuss, just build the nest! get on with it already!!

Really, I'm just kidding.  I love watching birds search all around for the best place to build.  They seem so human.  I can just imagine what they could be thinking.  

I'm fairly certain this is the same pair of flycatchers that so steadfastly built and tended a nest in April and May,  even though they disappointingly (at least for me) seem to have raised Bronzed Cowbirds instead of flycatchers.  Watching from the front deck for a few days last week was entertaining.  Here (photo on right) one looks over the dead cottonwood stump that has already this spring proved a successful home for European Starlings (though, really, who needs more of those to compete with our native cavity-nesters?) and Golden-fronted Woodpeckers.  (The woodpeckers had chiseled out quite a few holes in the two old cottonwoods during the winter--a few in our house, too! Golden-fronted wp's are the contractors who provide housing for several species.)

Here (left) the lively brown flycatchers  flutter excitedly over the birdhouse that's already been used by Brown-crested Flycatchers for many years.  Though not a great photo, it does capture the flurry of activity as they "quest" for that perfect spot. 




Flycatchers are not the only birds on a quest for the perfect nest in our June yard. These Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, if not still searching out nesting places, are certainly searching for something.

In tall Washingtonian Palm trees they look high...

they look low....

Once called Tree Ducks, these guys favor the palms and sometimes even sit on the electrical lines.  Every day we watch them on our dock, preening and sunning themselves.  And early in the morning, before the heat is oppressive, we watch their pilgrimage.  Emily would certainly be wondering the whys and wherefores of their constant search.

The Northern Mockingbird nest in the neighbor's small Anacua tree that a few weeks ago contained a single nestling (see posts from May) was empty by early June without my seeing any newly fledged Mockingbirds. The quick glimpse I had one day of a nestling with dark feathers was too brief to say for sure it was a cowbird. 

[I'll repeat again my disclaimer about bothering nests.  It is something I am super careful about.  I don't want to  move branches to get closer looks or disturb the nesters.] 

Two weeks ago the neighbors discovered a mockingbird going in and out of the Cenizo shrub that is less than ten feet from the Anacua where the first mockingbird nest was. (Cenizo is the native "purple sage" that blooms so beautifully across the river a few days after a summer rain.  Its ashy-green foliage and soft purple blooms  decorate the wild thorny brush along the Arroyo Colorado and are often used in landscaping.)

I think this second nest, fastened like the first to  forking branches about four feet above the ground, may have been built by the mockingbird that sang day and night during the time the other pair were nesting. (See this post for a picture of that nest site.)

It surprises me that the nests are so close together.  The neighborhood gossip in me is starting to speculate.  Did the pair, to make up for the first possibly cowbird-infested nest, start a new one nearby before the cowbird had left home?  Or is this a case of Big Love (one of my favorite television shows) where one male has actually two adjacent homes and two ladies?   Hmmmm.   (I read an interesting article the other day, while throwing out old birding magazines, that cited DNA studies showing supposedly monogamous nesters sometimes having multiple mates.  Some males father broods with more than one female and sometimes eggs in one nest have more than one male parent. )

Whatever the parentage, nestled in the cup of coarse twigs, lined with finer vines and palm tree fibers, were six eggs, four of them light blue blotched with reddish brown.  According to my nest book  (Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds by Paul J. Baicich and Colin Harrison) those are indeed mockingbird eggs.  Hooray!  Unfortunately,  two more eggs were the pale blue-white of the Bronzed Cowbird. (No adult mockers were in sight, so my neighbor removed the two interloper eggs which, being tall,  he could do without touching the nest or the branches.)

A couple of days ago the eggs began hatching. The state bird of Texas, once again, is increasing in number!   And the neighborhood cats are running for cover as the Northern Mockingbirds begin their assault.  My hope is that the intense heat as well as the protective instincts of the birds will keep the cats indoors where domestic cats belong. 

I've been promising a photo of a Hooded Oriole nest and finally have one.  Woven of the finest materials, soft gold fibers from the palm tree, this is a nest I think Emily would call "of twig so fine," an achievement she guesses the wren aspires to.

On a frond of a Washingtonian (non-native) Palm tree, this nest is in the usual kind of tree for a Hooded Oriole but is not typical because it is on the top, not the underneath, side of a dried, not a green, palm frond.  The day following our discovery of the nest, high winds twisted the leaf so that the lovely little woven nest is now out of sight.  I was concerned that the winds would blow down the dried frond, but luckily it's still there, more hidden now from the marauding Bronzed Cowbirds. Woven of fibers pulled from the leaves and bark of the tree, the nest is perfectly camouflaged. 

Hooded Orioles, like Emily's nest-questers, seem always to be in search of a more perfect "household" even though every palm tree looks to my un-oriole eyes to be a perfectly good place. At least twenty palms are in--or within a short distance of--our yard, and at least two pairs of the little orioles continually fly from palm to palm.  I suspect the building of superfluous nests is a reaction to the overabundance of Bronzed Cowbirds.



I'll note just a few more of the active nests:

Another of our common nesters, Great-tailed Grackles, typically build large nests of twigs and weeds, sometimes several in the same tree or nearby trees. The one in the photo above is in our lovely blooming Retama tree.  Others are in an Ash tree and several are in two Live Oaks. The nests are usually pretty high in the trees and are apparently vulnerable to large birds of prey that fly over the yard, judging by both the fact that  Harris's Hawks have already raided a nest of young birds this spring,  and also by the reaction of adult grackles when vultures, hawks, and even gulls fly over the trees.  

The Turkey Vulture being chased by the grackle here was followed closely by a Black Vulture that was likewise harassed by the protective parents.  Male grackles don't seem to help build or sit on nests, but they do keep watch and go into action when necessary!


Curve-billed Thrashers have fledged already from the nest in the native Spanish Dagger Yucca.  You can tell this is a young bird because its spots are smaller, its bill slightly shorter, and its eye pale yellow rather than orange.  Curve-billed Thrashers have always nested in our yard and have had as many as three broods per year.  I've found their nests in several kinds of native trees including Negrito, Esperanza, and even one year in a metal Purple Martin house.  The house was no longer occupied by martins because it had become overgrown by small trees.

                                                                   
The last photo is of one of the Couches' Kingbirds that are nesting in a Live Oak tree. Their dawn song, longer and slower than their other calls and songs is one of my favorite sounds of a spring morning.

Our small Rio Grande Valley yard is filling up with more and more nests.  In such a place where "boughs are free --- / Households in every tree," our spring birds could indeed be described as a " throng -- /  Dancing around the sun." 

Yard Watch

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If I spend a lot of time outdoors--and who wouldn't with migration in full swing?--I don't have much time for adding to my blog.  But since I set up this blog to keep track of what's happening in the yard, I will write quickly tonight and show a few pictures. (If I'm tempted to tell stories or get too long-winded, I'll cut it short. Tonight it's just the news. )

First, you may have noticed that I changed the photograph  behind the blog's title above.  The Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are just so much fun to watch that I wanted them to look over the page. (See this earlier post for other photos.) Every morning they stand or sit on the railing of the deck by the river, waiting for the neighbors to put out seed.  Today while my husband fished on the dock, I walked  up the stairs to the deck where the ducks had  perched, to within  ten feet of them, and they didn't move -- until I started talking too loudly and they flew in their awkward way to the next dock.

I'll be happy to see the ducks bring their family along with them later in the summer.  I'm not sure where the nest is--they are still spending much of the day here, so they may not have a nest yet.  Last summer I thought maybe they had nested on top of a neighbor's old shed where they spent a lot of time.   

Other nesting news:  Northern Mockingbirds have completed a nest in a small Anacua tree in the yard just to the east.  Another pair of mockingbirds are close by, perhaps in the yard to the west.    Brown-crested Flycatchers still take dried grass into a small hanging bird house though its proximity to the garage makes them nervous. The Altamira Orioles, Hooded Orioles, and Kiskadees are relatively quiet, not much movement in and out of the nests.  That may mean  they are sitting on eggs.  Of course, cowbirds keep close watch on all and harass them continually.  Green Jays  today followed each other around the tree canopy over the driveway, ruffling up their feathers and almost snuggling.  I know of no nest yet, but there must be one close by.  A pair of Northern Cardinals are also eating at feeders in the yard off and on all day.  They are certainly nesting nearby also.  The Curved-bill Thrashers are probably sitting on eggs by now in their nest in the neighbor's yucca. 

Every morning, a large male Wild Turkey flies over from across the river to walk around (and gobble) in the yard .  Today he flew to an entry deck behind the house, not far from where Brad was fishing on the dock.   They gobbled at each other for a bit  (I wonder what the bird thought of the fisherman)  and then the turkey moved around the house to stroll the driveway.  Brad also saw bottlenose dolphins this morning feeding in the river.  I'm hoping to catch them in a photo soon.  The dolphins are  one of my favorite things about the river.

The last few days have been good  ones for watching spring migrants.  Six new species have been added to the 2010 Yard List since Monday.   (The list is to the right in the sidebar.  I always set the recent additions in red.)

A beautiful male Rose-breasted Grosbeak has been in the yard for a couple of days.  He's not eating the orange half that's in the photo, of course--that's for the five species of orioles, Great-tailed Grackles, Green Jays, and woodpeckers.  He's partial to the sunflower seeds.  That's a picture of a grosbeak female to the right. These birds are a little skittish and shy at first, but once they find a feeder with large striped sunflowers, they settle in and eat for as long as there's still seed.  I think their large seed-cracking beaks make them look comical.

Female and juvenile Rose-breasted Grosbeaks look similar to the male Black-headed Grosbeaks we sometimes have in the winter. (Look at this post for a photo of last January's first-year male.)

 (Yesterday was actually a two-grosbeak day when a Blue Grosbeak flew in very briefly.  Rust-red wing bars distinguish it from the very similar Indigo Bunting. ) 

The best migrant news is that the Painted Buntings are here.  Monday I saw a male fly out of the drive and across the road to  the patch of weeds beside the sorghum  field. I watched from the deck for awhile, and when it didn't appear again, I walked to the end of the drive and was lucky enough to get photos.  Not great photos --- since they were taken from across the road, but any picture of a Painted Bunting, even if fuzzy and small, is fun to look at--just like the birds.  So brightly colored with red breasts, blue heads and wings, red eye-rings and green backs, these birds do not look real but like they were drawn by a child with a brand new box of crayons. 

                                                                  
In the picture on the left, a second bunting hides behind another.  Until I downloaded the photo to my computer,  I thought I had seen  just one bird!  Arching above the birds in the picture is a seed-head of guinea grass that had grown up around a stand of century plants. An invasive plant that gardeners around here battle continually, guinea grass is tenacious and tough to pull up.  If you let it grow too long (if you're a lazy gardener like me) you have to dig the clumps out of the ground with a shovel.  I know I shouldn't,  but I let them go to seed when the buntings are migrating because that's where I always see the beautiful birds-- in the untidy clumps of grass in my yard.  (I guess pulling a few in my yard wouldn't help much anyway since across the road there's plenty of it. )

Yesterday was actually a two-grosbeak day when a Blue Grosbeak flew in very briefly.  Rust-red wing bars distinguish it from the very similar Indigo Bunting.  I hope I have a chance for a photo if it returns.

Not all the birds of the yard are as brightly colored as the Painted Bunting. But the eye of the Bronzed Cowbird is as red as the bunting's brightest feathers. Look at the ruff of feathers around this guy's neck that he can puff up when he really wants attention. (If it were not late as I write this, I'd talk more about this amazing ---but not beloved-- bird.  I'll put that off for another time when I'm not just giving a yard report.) 

Other new birds I've seen and added to the 2010 Year List since my last report :  Western Kingbirds perching at the top of the Royal Poinciana ; a  Swainson's Hawk soaring high above the fields; and a  Willow Flycatcher  making quick forays over the driveway to catch bugs from a perch in a mesquite.  (The flycatcher obligingly sang  as it flew away so that I could tell it was a Willow and not an Alder. Usually I have no idea which of those two little flycatchers I'm seeing.)

Well, that's the end of this installment of the backyard report.

To borrow from Garrison Keillor:  That's the news from  the Arroyo Colorado...where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the birds are above average.

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!"