Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Texas

Okay. Let's recap:

least grebe
pied billed grebe
white pelican
brown pelican
double crested cormorant
neotropic cormorant
great blue heron
great egret
snowy egret
little blue heron
tricolored heron
reddish egret
black crowned night heron
white ibis
roseate spoonbill
black bellied whistling duck
ross's goose
canada goose
mottled duck
mallard
northern pintail
blue winged teal
northern shoveler
redhead
lesser scaup
common goldeneye
bufflehead
ruddy duck
black vulture
turkey vulture
osprey
northern harrier
coopers hawk
red tailed hawk
crested caracara
american kestrel
common moorhen
american coot
sandhill crane
black bellied plover
piping plover
kildeer
yellowlegs
willet
spotted sandpiper
long billed curlew
marbled godwit
ruddy turnstone
sanderling
dunlin
common snipe
laughing gull
ring billed gull
royal tern
forster's tern
rock dove
white winged dove
mourning dove
inca dove
greater roadrunner
belted kingfisher
ladder backed woodpecker
eastern phoebe
american crow
carolina chickadee
tufted titmouse
carolina wren
ruby crowned kinglet
american robin
gray catbird
northern mockingbird
loggerhead shrike
european starling
orange crowned warbler
yellow rumped warbler
northern cardinal
savannah sparrow
red winged blackbird
eastern meadowlark
brewers blackbird
great tailed grackle
common grackle
american goldfinch
house sparrow

We haven't done any serious birding yet. These are just the usual suspects
we've stumbled into. We going to look for something more exotic when we
move a little farther south down into the "Rio Grande Valley". It's funny.
It's called the Rio Grande Valley, when there isn't a mountain for miles.
It's a long drawn out coastal plain for a hundred miles inland from the
gulf. But if there were a valley, it would be there along the Rio Grande.