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February 17, 2007
Jared Judy, a Texas Nature Conservancy Volunteer took eight participants out to the blind near the lek used by the Attwater's Prairie Chicken to watch them strut their stuff on a very cold February morning. We heard at least one Prairie Chicken call early in the morning just before first light and saw a couple of birds fly in to one of the corners of the lek. Unfortunately we only got brief looks at the Prairie Chickens on the ground and our best looks were when they were flying away from the lek. None of the Prairie Chickens really got to booming and strutting their stuff. It was disappointing. Jared figured that none of the Prairie Chickens were willing to boom due to the recent cold weather and the clear skies. He informed us that historically the best conditions for a good show from the Prairie Chickens are on a warm cloudy morning. For those who are interested in the status of the Attwater's Prairie Chickens Jared told us that the population at the Preserve has been hovering around 15 to 20 birds with slightly more females then males for the past several years. He also told us that the native wild population at Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge had died out a couple years ago and the population now consists off all captive bred birds and numbers between 50 and 60 Prairie Chickens. When we got back to the preserve headquarters a few of the participants signed up for the March trip in hopes of seeing a better show in March. Also, Jared showed us some videos taken of the Prairie Chickens on the lek. One of the videos reminded me of the first booming tour I went on at the preserve where the Prairie Chickens were especially active and put on a great show. Any way all the participants were good sports about not getting the experience that they had hoped for and I thank you all for that. I really was hopping that you all would have a similar experience to the one I had the first time I went on a trip like this.
After leaving the Preserve we spilt up and some of the group went in search of the Monk Parakeets that have established a colony near the preserve in Dickinson and the rest went with me in search of scoters and Pacific Loon on Galveston Island. We first stopped at the Flagship Pier Hotel off of 25th Street and the Seawall to look for scoters. I have had the best luck here at finding Surf Scoters and we did see one immature male Surf Scoter but it was a flyby, hardly the look we were hopping for. While we were scanning for the scoters we did find a few Common Loons, one raft of scaup most likely Lesser but they were too far out to identify to species. We also did see 3-4 Northern Gannet including one adult. We then went over to Offat's Bayou to see if we could find a Pacific Loon. We saw several Common Loons but no Pacific. While we were there we saw a Brown Pelican being harassed by a Laughing Gull who was hoping to steal a meal away from the pelican. The Laughing Gull even landed on the pelicans head once and its back a couple of times. It was quite a site. The group that went for the Monk Parakeets did manage to find and get great looks at a few parakeets. For the trip we observed about 23 species. A list of species seen is below.
Locations: Texas City Prairie Preserve (TCPP), Flagship Pier Hotel (FPH) and Offats Bayou (OB)
Species: 23
Common Loon (FPH) 4, (OB) 8
Northern Gannet (FPH) 4
Brown Pelican (TCPP) 5, (OB) 8
Double-crested Cormorant (TCPP) 15, (FPH) 10, (OB) 1
Neotropic Cormorant (TCPP) 5
Great Blue Heron (TCPP) 1
Surf Scoter (FPH) 1 (flyby)
Mallard (OB) 4
Scaup sp. (FPH) 20
Northern Harrier (TCPP) 1
Attwater's (Greater) Prairie Chicken (TCPP) 7
Wilson's Snipe (TCPP) 10
Laughing Gull (TCPP) 20, (FPH) 60, (OB) 15
Hearring Gull (TCPP) 1 (third winter)
Bonaparte's Gull (OB) 40
Ring-billed Gull (OB) 2
Caspian Tern (FPH) 1
Forster's Tern (OB) 5
Rock Pigeon (FPH) 25, (OB) 8
Monk Parakeet (Dickinson) 3
Savannah Sparrow (TCPP) 1
Eastern Meadowlark (TCPP) 3
Great-tailed Grackle (FPH) 10
Participants: Cindy Douglass, Dennis Vollmar, Bob Wall, Bill Tarbox, Bryan Tarbox, Ellen Baker, Adam Wood and Maricarmen Razones
~ Adam Wood, OG Field Trip Coordinator, birdman_570@yahoo.com, 713-515-1692
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