February 19: Sabal Palm and other places in the Rio Grande Valley

We started out birding in Weslaco, looking for the Nebraska St parrots and vulture-roost at the cemetery. Then we headed to FM 511 (Raptor Central!) / Old Port Isabel Road, Sabal Palm Grove, Bahia Grande inlet, South Padre Island (Isla Blanca Park and convention center), and ended our birding day looking at the Oliveira Park parrots.

American Wigeon
Blue-winged Teal
Cinnamon Teal
Northern Shoveler
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Redhead
Ruddy Duck
Common Loon
* Least Grebe
Pied-billed Grebe
Northern Gannet (I could ID it as a gannet with my binocs, but it was too far to age. Kim saw with his scope and said it was a juvenile. This was out from Isla Blanca Park.)
Double-crested Cormorant
American White Pelican
Brown Pelican
American Bittern

Great Blue Heron

Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Little Blue Heron
Tricolored Heron
Reddish Egret
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron
White Ibis
Roseate Spoonbill
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
* White-tailed Kite

* Harris’s Hawk
White-tailed Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk
Crested Caracara

American Kestrel
* Merlin
* Aplomado Falcon New for North America!

Common Gallinule
American Coot
Black-bellied Plover
Snowy Plover
American Oystercatcher
* Solitary Sandpiper
Greater Yellowlegs
Willet
Long-billed Curlew
Ruddy Turnstone
Sanderling
Dunlin
Long-billed Dowitcher
Bonaparte’s Gull
Laughing Gull

Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Jaeger sp. (I couldn’t ID it through binocs. Kim wasn’t certain but thought it was a probable Pomarine, at South Padre Island.)
Caspian Tern
Forster’s Tern
Royal Tern
Black Skimmer
Rock Pigeon
Inca Dove
* White-tipped Dove

* Green Parakeet
* Red-crowned Parrot

* Flammulated Owl
Belted Kingfisher
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Eastern Phoebe
Great Kiskadee
Couch’s Kingbird
Loggerhead Shrike
White-eyed Vireo
Green Jay

Black-crested Titmouse

House Wren
Marsh Wren
Carolina Wren
* Bewick’s Wren
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Yellow-rumped Warbler
* Olive Sparrow

* Crimson-collared Grosbeak LIFER!!

Northern Cardinal
Red-winged Blackbird
Eastern Meadowlark

Great-tailed Grackle

* Lesser Goldfinch

House Sparrow