Top 10 Birding Experiences

In the latest edition of Bird Watcher's Digest, one of the articles is about the author's top ten birds. I started thinking about my top ten birding experiences and thought it would be fun to write about them. With this being my 27th year of birdwatching, it was harder that I thought to narrow it down to ten. Several experiences that are memorable were close but didn't make the list. One I didn't include was seeing the Rose-breasted Grosbeak from my window at Mom's house when I was ten years old. I looked at him through my 7x35 binoculars and then started flipping through my field guide to see if I could find him. (If you know anything about field guides, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are near the end. It took a while.) I finally found him and began looking at other birds to see if I could identify them as well. That started it all . . . With that, here are my top ten birding experiences.

10. I was walking along a trail at Founder's Park in Arlington. It's just a little park that you wouldn't even know was there. I happened to live within walking distance of it, so I knew about it. I heard some rustling in the grass to the right of the trail. I walked over to investigate and saw a Red-bellied Woodpecker and a European Starling fighting. They would turn over on the ground, each gaining the upperhand (upperwing?) for a little bit before the other would flip around and get on top. At one point, the woodpecker got on top of the starling and pounded him four or five times in the chest with his beak. The starling screamed and the woodpecker flew to the top of a dead tree with a hole drilled in it. I understood the reason for the fight then. The starling was trying to take the woodpecker's nest from him. I looked at the woodpecker and he had blood on his bill. The starling flew to a branch about 8 ft. off the ground and started preening his chest feather. Blood was dripping out of his wounds. After about a minute on the branch, he started getting a little woozy and eventually dropped to the ground dead. It was kind of neat to see a woodpecker defeat a starling since the battles usually go the other way.

9. When I interviewed at the Wild Birds Unlimited in Dallas at the corner of Lovers Lane and Douglas Avenue, the owner informed me as I walked to my car, "We've got martins." I looked over to the PMC-24 house that was just covered with them. At that point, I wasn't very impressed with martins. I had never known anyone with a martin house, and they were just another springtime migrant for me to tick off my list. I was hired at WBU and Brad, the manager of the retail part of the store, solicited my help to take care of the martins including keeping records of the numbers of eggs and babies in the nests. We trapped sparrows and starlings and pulled their nests out everyday. Over the next couple of years, we put up a gourd rack with plastic Supergourds and increased the number of birds we had. By this time I was warehouse manager and was completely taking care of the martins. My love for them increased and I would arrive at work early just so I could sit and watch them. I began reading about them and learning their behaviors. They are fascinating birds and I'll always think of them martin colony at WBU as the first time I grew to love these birds.

8. One of the hardest birds to see is a Yellow Rail. They keep to the ground under plumes of salt grass in marshy areas. You come across mosquitoes, snakes and a host of other things that people normally try to avoid to find Yellow Rails. The first rail walk I participated in was led by David Sarkozi at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge. A rail walk consists of about 20 people walking in a straight line across the marsh with two people holding a rope with several plastic bottle attached to it with rocks in them. The rail will fly ahead of the line and everyone hurries to form a circle around where it landed. Everyone takes one step at a time toward the center of the circle and eventually the rail will fly up and out of the circle. The first one our group found flew up and right at me. He was about to hit me in my chest when I kind of moved out of the way, put my hand up and guided him away from me. It was definitely the closest I've been to a Yellow Rail! That year, I saw all six North American rails.

7. I had taken my inflatable kayak to Lake Charlotte. It's a shallow lake lined with cypress trees north of Interstate 10 between FM 562 and the Trinity River. It's very peaceful there and the birding can be good. I headed west across the lake and found a Bald Eagle sitting in a dead cypress tree. I got about 100 yards from him and got some excellent looks at him through my binoculars. He leaned forward, seeming to focus on something in the water. He flew off the perch, in my general direction. I followed him with my binoculars and watched as he picked a fish off the surface of the water about 40 yards in front of me! The view I got through my binoculars was as good if not better than the cameras on TV, which was the only way I'd seen eagles fishing to that point.

6. I have a list of "nemesis birds." These are birds that I have chased and should have seen, but just didn't for whatever reason. Many times I would hear something along the lines of, "It was here yesterday, but no one has found it today." Well, the Snowy Owl had been one of those birds. They don't get as far south as Texas very often. One year two of them showed up in southern Oklahoma. I went with friends to see them and we couldn't locate them. We were living in Mansfield, just south of Fort Worth when one showed up in Abilene. I decided to chase him because he was being seen very regularly and we had great directions. So, Harry Conner and I loaded up in his car and headed to Abilene. The first spot we went to was deserted, but we noticed several cars parked on the other side of the highway with people standing outside them with spotting scopes. We figured that was our best chance, so we drove over there. One of the people pointed him out to us and I set up my scope. There he was! An adult in complete adult plumage. Most of the time the ones that show up that far south are juveniles and aren't the snowy white color, so my first Snowy Owl was very special.

5. Ever since I can remember, the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds at my grandparents' house (where we are living now) were thick as bees in the fall during their southward migration. We moved into that house in September 2003 and I immediately put up my feeders. I had been given a Perky Pet 96 oz. feeder and a Perky Pet 48 oz. feeder. I had a couple of other large feeders and there were a couple my grandmother left. I put up my pole system outside our dining room window and the hummingbirds showed up in great numbers. At times there were probably 100 to 150 birds swarming around the feeders at a time. I was replenishing the nectar (over 2 gallons) daily. It was absolutely incredible. They haven't been that thick around my feeders since.

4. For years, the Swallow-tailed Kite was a nemesis bird for me. I was told, "Just go to the Wal-Mart parking lot in Liberty and you'll see them flying around." Well, when I went to the Wal-Mart parking lot, the kites must have decided to move the exact opposite direction because I never saw them. One spring Harry and I came down for a little birdwatching and decided to go to the Armand Bayou Nature Center. We walked through the woods and were seeing a few things. At one point, under a little break in the canopy, I looked up and saw one! I yelled, "Swallow-tailed Kite!" and pointed. Harry thought I was joking, but he looked up just in time to see the kite fly out of sight. It was as if that was all I needed was to see the first one. I've seen one every year since.

3. This one happened in 1992. It was the last year I lived at home. I had a hummingbird feeder outside of my upstairs bedroom window. I had a stool that I sat on by the window to watch the birds. I was watching the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds buzzing around the feeder when a different one came in. I looked him up and identified him as a Buff-bellied Hummingbird. The range map showed them not getting north of the Rio Grande Valley much. I called Bill Ehlig to tell him and he encouraged me to get some pictures. I grabbed my camera and took several pictures. I sent them to David Dauphin who lived in Pinehurst at the time. He did some research and told me that was only the fifth documented record of a Buff-bellied Hummingbird in Chambers County. The hummingbird stayed for a couple of days at my feeder and then was gone. I saw David Dauphin a few days later at the Sterling Library where he told me that a couple of days after the hummingbird left my feeder, he had one at his feeder in his yard. I've always wondered if it was the same one.

2. A strong April cold front moved offshore in 2007. I knew the birding would be good in our woods. I was halfway tempted to drive to High Island, but decided to stay and see what showed up in our woods. The birds were everywhere! I got to one point along the eastern fenceline where I was simply surrounded by birds. I would look at one and immediately find another to look at. One landed at the top of a little tallow tree about 30 ft. in front of me and I quickly found him in my binoculars. It was a male Black-throated Blue Warbler. It was one of those moments where I knew what I was looking at, but didn't believe it. They are considered rare at the end of April on the Upper Texas Coast. I had looked at them hundreds of times in my books, but never thought I'd see one here. They normally migrate up the East Coast and not through the Central Flyway. If I remember correctly, that is the only bird I've seen on our property that was a lifer for me.

1. I was hired as the youth minister at the Freetown Road Church of Christ in Grand Prairie, TX in June of 1995. I quickly developed a relationship with Harry Conner, one of the teens in the group. He became interested in birdwatching, so I took him with me quite a bit. We normally went to locations in the DFW area. I had told him about High Island several times and he really wanted to go. So, I talked with his parents and we decided that if he kept his grades up his senior year (1996 - 1997) he could skip a Friday and Monday to go with me to High Island. Harry did his part and off we went the third weekend of April. When we got there, it was cold and rainy. The thought of a fallout didn't cross my mind. I was disappointed because of the bad weather. We went to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge and stopped at The Willows. This is a little stand of willow trees around a little pond where people see lots of warblers and other migrants during the spring. The rain was blowing horizontal as we looked at some Bay-breasted Warblers in some tallow trees across the fence line. We drove to High Island where I met up with some people I had met on the AOL bird chat. Sheridan Coffey said, "This is an incredible day!" Everyone was huddled under the kiosk at Boy Scout Woods, but they all had binoculars to their eyes looking at things in the trees. I quickly realized how good the day would be. It was a spectacular fallout event. A fallout occurs when a strong front moves offshore and brings rain and strong north winds with it. Many of the birds that migrate through the Central Flyway (which passes right over the Upper Texas Coast) take off at nightfall from the Yucatan Peninsula, fly straight across the Gulf of Mexico and hit the Texas coast between 2:00 and 4:00 the next afternoon. When they hit the rain and north wind, they're too far across to turn back so they fight the north wind and rain and are absolutely exhausted when they hit the coast. They literally fall out of the sky to the first trees they see. That is what they did that day. There were birds everywhere. It was not a matter of finding a bird to look at - we had to decide which one to look at! Harry was relatively new at birdwatching and I think he got over 90 lifers on that trip. People still talk about the fallout of '97. In fact, I went to High Island on April 18 this year and heard some people talking about it. I told them I was there and they excitedly asked me what it was like. They hadn't even been there but heard it was incredible. Some of the long-time birders in the area say it was easily one of the top five fallouts ever, maybe even the best. It definitely goes down as my best birding memory.