Southern Lapwing and Stuff, 4/17/24

The past few days I've seen some really nice photos of the first Texas record Southern Lapwing at the Llano Grande golf course in Mercedes.  So I ran over this morning to try for some better shots.  The bird was much closer than it was the other day, right in front of the clubhouse, but cloudy conditions made still photography tough.  Lapwings are basically large plovers belonging to the subfamily Vanellinae.  This Southern Lapwing is Vanellus chilensis of the cayennensis subspecies.

There were a few photographers present when I arrived.  One of them was making a video of the bird through a Swarovski spotting scope with the big 115 mm objective lense.  I thought he looked familiar and I said Hi and introduced myself.  Damn it was Clay Taylor who I have known for many years.  I haven't seen him in a few years and he was wearing a cap so that will be my excuse.  Anyway Clay is a mainstay at all the birding festivals as he is Swarovski Optik's North American Representative.

Clay was guiding a guy from Tucson who turned out to be Mike Terenzoni, astronomer at the University of Arizona's Flandrau Planetarium.  Mike commented that he would like to see American Golden Plover after Clay called a flyover.  I told them that I had a couple of dozen of them at the Sugar House pond a few days ago and Clay stated that in his many years of coming to the Valley he had never been to the Sugar House.  So off we went.

Normally this time of year the effluent pond at the Sugar House is full of water from the winter sugar cane refining season.  But the Sugar House has closed down so water is dropping as we continue our dry spring.  Shorebirding usually season starts in early July with adults returning after breeding in the Arctic, but this year we are early and getting migrants on their way north.

Migrant Franklin's Gulls are on their way to nest in prairie potholes uo north.  I like the Semipalmated Plover photobomb.  The gulls rounded wingtips with lots of white make them eazy to separate from our local Laughing Gulls.

Speaking of Semipalms, there were at least ten of these nomally uncommon in Hidalgo County small plovers.

The big flock of Fulvous Whistling-Ducks continued in the distant corner with a few Roseate Spoonbills.

Lots of peeps, these are mostly Least Sandpipers.

A few Hudsonian Godwits remained but were hard to photograph.  The black and white tails make these large shorebirds easy to ID in flight.

Overall things were about the same as a few days ago.  We got Mike some distant American Golden-Plovers.  Clay was complaining about having to go to Vienna to Swarovski corporate headquarters for meetings but he enjoyed his visit to the Sugar House.  Life is good.

Shorebirdomania at the Sugar House Pond, 4/14/24

After seeing the Southern Lapwing yesterday, I decided to leave the gathering crowd and head up to the Sugar House pond to look for the Hudsonian Godwits found by Ryan Rodgriquez the day before.  Though world population estimates are over 70,000 (compared to 8,000,000,000 people), not rare by shorebird standards, their narrow migratory path up the center of the United States means most birders have to go to some effort to see one.  We are fortunate here in the Rio Grande Valley to have a few pass through easch spring.  They completely bypass us in the fall.  It did not take long to find the dozen or so that stopped to feed in the receding effluent water at the Sugar House.

The forty acre pond was loaded with birds yesterday and counting or estimating numbers for eBird took some effort.  Northern Shovellers and Fulvous Whistling Ducks numbered in the hunderds as did American Avocets, Black-necked Stilts and Stilt Sandpipers.

Pretty uncommon in spring, this Dunlin has vestiges of the black belly it will sport in breeding plumage.

American Golden Plover and Buff-breasted Sandpiper are among the species birders refer to as grasspipers.  The best places to look for them in migration are pastures with short grass and turf farms.  It's a little unusual to see them in the water.

The shorebirds were frequently spooked by either raptors or the birders who joined me.  The shorebird watchers on the berm above the pond numbered about a dozen at one point.  It's good to have mutliple eyes and scopes when so many birds are involved.  The real challenge was picking through the peeps.  There are five species in this photo.

Let's break them down.  The larger ones are Baird's Sandpiper and Pectoral Sandpiper.  Here the buffier one on the left is a Baird's while the other darker large one showing a faint orange bast to the bill is a Pectoral.  The smaller one below is a Least.

Western Sandpiperis slightly larger than Least and much more pale with a much longer, thick based bill.

Not as brown as Least with a short straight bill is Semipalmated Sandpiper.  Short-billed male Westerns and long-billed female Semipalms can be confusing.  The second bird from the left is a Semipalmated.  The others are Leasts.

Here we have Semipalmated, Western and Least (left from bottom to top) with a big Pectoral.  The others are Leasts except for that one right under the Pec.  It's either a Semipalm or a Western

Baird's, Semipalmated, Least and Pectoral, left to right.

Here's a buch of Stilt Sandpipers with three Wilson's Phalaropes.

Seventeen species of shorebirds was all I could ID.  The Sugar House is closing down and after this water evaporates it will be the end of a great Hidalgo shorebirding hot spot.  It may refill with heavy rain but it also could be turned into a cotton field.  As this is the only sugar refinery in south Texas, it also means the end of sugar cane farming in the Valley.  Probably not a bad thing as sugar cane requires a lot of water and the Valley doesn't have any.