The invasion of Mexican vagrant birds into the Rio Grande Valley continued this weekend with a young male Elegant Trogon joining the White-throated Robin and Crimson-collared Grosbeaks already at Frontera Audubon thicket. They make the Black-headed Grosbeak, a rare bird down here in it’s own right seem rather mundane. My little birding patch is less fun these days with the hoards of visiting birders down here.

Meanwhile an Additional Crimson-collared Grosbeak joined the Blue Bunting in Laredo and an additional Blue Bunting was found at Santa Ana NWR. More Rose-throated Becards showed up at Chapeno and Santa Ana NRW. The Social Flycatcher at Bentson State Park has not been seen for a few days.

Saturday afternoon my wife and I made a run out to South Padre Island just to see something different. We checked out a mystery warbler that had been reported earlier and found a first winter Prairie Warbler which is one of the harder to find warblers down here.

This is a list of Mexican vagrants seen in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas during the past two months. It’s been a few months since the Blue Mockingbird and Black-headed Nightingale-Thrush have been seen.

Green-breasted Mango
Rose-throated Becard
Social Flycatcher (2nd US record)
Dusky-capped Flycatcher (3rd US record of lawrencei subspecies)
White-throated Robin (4th and 5th US records)
Golden-crowned Warbler
Gray-crowned Yelowthroat
Crimson-collared Grosbeak (9th – ? US records)
Blue Bunting

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of that kind of birding that I don’t really enjoy. Standing around with a bunch of other birders waiting for some mega-rarity to show up. This weekend I had one long wait and one short. Saturday morning I made the third try for White-throated Robin and after two hours of scouring the underbrush by binoculars with twenty other birders finally got a brief but good look at this fifth USA record. I had already seen the second and third records but it makes for a nice year and patch bird. I hate it when I’m not the first to see the bird and have to endure the patience of other nice birders trying to help me find the bird.

Saturday afternoon I wanted to do some real birding so my wife Honey and I headed over to the Anacua Unit of Las Palomas Wildlife Area. This is a state owned piece of land set aside mostly for hunting purposed and is rarley birded. This is a shame because it has some really neat habitat along the Rio Grande. I think most birders are a bit intimidated by having to deal with Border Patrol and the possibility of running into illegal migrants and drug smugglers. Anyway we had a good afternoon with a great look at a beautiful female plumaged Rose-throated Becard. Finding a TBRC review species is always exciting. This is at least the fifth one found during this bizaar season of Mexican vagrants. We also scored with a wintering Least Flycatcher and seven species of warblers.

After we got home I found the Social Flycatcher discovered on Friday had been refound. Now I’ve seen lots of Social Flycatchers in Mexico but this is only the second US record. So Honey and I got up early on Sunday and drove over to Bentson State Park and the poorly named World Birding Center. As we walked in successful birders were already leaving and running to their cars to make the drive over to Weslaco for the robin and grosbeak. We got to spot where it had been seen a few minutes earlier. It started raining and looked like we might be in for a long day. John Arvin who discovered the bird arrived in a few minutes with other birders and played a short call on the tape. Nothing happened. The group walked a ways down the road. As I walked to catch up with them I passed where they had played the tape and heard the bird call. A few minutes later I found the bird for the rest of the group. I like it better when it happens that way. Not too much else exciting. We say a couple of nice Gray Hawks and heard Northern Beardless Tyrannulet.

A White-throated Robin was found on Jan. 2 at the amazing Frontera Audubon Thicket in Weslaco. Staging its own mini-invasion, this is the third sighting of this Mexican Turdid species for the Rio Grande Valley in the past two weeks. Even though I saw all four of the 1998 birds, I’m still unhappy about dipping twice in my attemps to see this bird this week. The bird was seen yesterday with an unbelievable five Clay-colored Robins. I’ll give it another go on Sat.

Two male Crimson-collared Grosbeaks continue as does the wintering Summer Tanagers, Ovenbird, Tropical Parula, and Wilson’s, Black-throated Green, Black-and white and Yellow-throated Warblers. I haven’t seen the Dusky-capped Flycatcher since Jan. 1. Yesterday I heard rumors of Veery, Wood Thrush and Western Tanager but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Checked my email on the morning of Dec. 31 and found that an immature Black-legged Kittywake had been found at the Boca Chica jetty. My wife Honey was tired from our all day excursion to Salineno the day before so I was off on my own to seach for this Texas lifer. At Boca Chica I found the beach as smooth as a highway so I was at the jetty in no time at all. The bird wasn’t sitting with a group of gulls like it was supposed to, so I put my scope up on the jetty and soon found my black-collared beauty feeding in the ship channel. It then flew to a nearby group of gulls and terns an allowed me to take a few pics.

I then turned my scope to the ocean and found a couple of Common Loons. Then an immature Northern Gannet flew by and then another dive-bombed into the sea. Bonaparte’s Gulls played in the surf at the end of the jetty. Then I caught sight of a dark, long-winged gull racing across the surface of the water…… JAEGER! He eventually gave me some great views, light phased bird, dark cap, big barrel-chested barred breast but being a land lubber I just don’t have the experience to make the call. I think it was a Pomarine Jaeger.

After some lunch, lovingly packed by my sweetie, I drove back down the beach to the mouth of the Rio Grande (Boca Chica), Sometimes good gulls like Lesser Black-backed and Glaucous can be seen on the other side of the Rio making for a good Mexican tick. No such luck this time, but I did find this sick Northern Gannet marooned on the beach. He probably wound up as coyote food but that’s part of nature too.