Saturday’s project…. Willacy County.
I was looking at how many birds we’ve seen by county. We’ve got 13 counties in which we’ve seen at least 100 birds. (9 of those counties are in Texas, 2 in Colorado, 1 in Arizona, and 1 in New Mexico.) Looking at the map, the closest county to us that we don’t have 100 birds in yet is Willacy. We can get there in less than half an hour, so that makes a good day-trip project.
We had 74 birds ever seen in Willacy. All we needed to do is get 26 more. Problem is, there aren’t many places to go in this County. There are a few Wildlife preserves, but I’ve already hiked those and racked up what birds I could when the weather was cooler. Now it’s pretty hot to go out hiking in any of those places. None of the big World Birding hotspots are in Willacy County. We need a lot more birds, so we should go somewhere with water. There are a lot more birds around water. We got up early and headed for Port Mansfield.
We weren’t after any particular birds, we just wanted to see every bird we could find, then look to see if that got us over 100 for the county. We got Fulvous Ducks, Wild Turkeys, herons, egrets, spoonbills, Harris’s Hawks, a White-tailed Hawk, Crested Caracaras, Wilson’s Plovers, American Oystercatchers, Long-billed Curlews, a Least Tern, Caspian and Royal Terns, a Buff-bellied Hummingbird, Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, Horned Larks, Long-billed Thrashers, Bronzed Cowbirds.
We got home and put it all together. 53 species in all for the county for the day. 25 new birds. 25! Now, for Willacy County, we have exactly…….99.
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