In Texas
Well, I have landed in Texas for the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest. I am again helping out my friends at the birdJam booth. I haven't done much birding yet, but some parrots flew over our hotel and I discovered that Denese from birdJam is a little sentimental over great-tailed grackles. She remembers them fondly from the past and almost gets misty when we pass a tree full noisily roosting grackles. Yeah, she's not strange at all.The Raptor Project family is here in Texas. Some may remember the awesome gyrfalcon story from a week ago. I wonder what kind of hunting the bird will do here? While they were setting up, they perched out their Asian black hornbill and John was kind enough to pose me near it for a photo. What a goofy looking bird with one dynamite beak! And for fun, I googled "hornbill" to see if I could come up with any interesting info and instead found a photo album of some guy vacationing with a hornbill...and let it clean his teeth...yeah, ew is right.
Well, I'm going to get some sleep and try to digiscope the crap out south Texas tomorrow.
Labels: Bird Festivals, Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest
posted by birdchick at 8:51 PM
4 Comments:
Welcome to Texas! I went to the LRGV fest last year and had a ton of fun. Of course last year there was a Northern Jacana at Bentsen-Rio Grande SP :)
Okay, here's a good Hornbill story. St. Catherine's Island in Georgia is one of the most successful places for breeding endangered Hornbills. Sometimes they get problem birds from zoos. One keeper seemed to be one of the few people that could take care of one of the Great Hornbills. She was able to enter the cage weekly and do a vet check. Well one day, he'd just had enough. He hit her with his beak and cracked her skull, driving her to the ground. When the other keepers went in to get her out as the lifted her up the hornbill went after her kneecaps. The Velociraptors of the bird world.
Grackles! My husband and I call the males Ramon and the females Tish. It makes much more sense to think of them like that.
What kind of parrots were overhead? Here in Austin we have feral quaker/monk parrots. Too bad you're not going to be in central Texas at all, I could show you some places to get a good margarita and watch birds at the same time :)
Don't forget to grab a bite to eat at Las Vegas Cafe in Harlingen, BC (I think it's still there; it's been a while for me). Have fun in the Valley and wave to my parents for me.
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