Last week: 4,000 mile trek to California, Arizona and Texas to get five new life birds, and thank the birding gods, went 5 for 5: Blue-footed Booby, Red-throated Pipit, Yellow-Green Vireo, Brown Booby and Yellow-crowned Warbler. Leaving Lake Havasu at dusk after seeing the Brown Booby, at Bill Williams Wildlife Refuge:
Vultures await as I arrive at the Frontera Audubon Thicket in Weslaco, Texas, in the southernmost tip of Texas:
You gotta really be a little nuts to travel 6 ½ hours by car from the Houston airport to attempt to track down an elusive little little bird in this thicket! By far the most difficult ‘get’: Yellow-crowned Warbler, which I finally spotted after four hours of intense searching, sunbathing at this water spot:
The celebration: Tex-Mex at a place where I can guarantee that I was the only one there who was not fluent in Spanish!
No sooner back to Wisconsin, and another lifer shows up close to home! Terrible photo, but after 'dipping’ on the spot where this Whopper Swan (an Asian species that is rarely seen in Central U.S.) had been seen near Portage, I went to the nearest Starbucks (toward Madison) to get something to eat and get wi-fi so I could check sightings update on my laptop and lo and behold: “… the swan has been sighted at a retention pond just south of Wal-Mart off of Highway 151 in Beaver Dam”! In a blur back in the car making a beeline and WOW - there is the bird, resting - among 300-400 Canada Geese!
