From Texas to Ohio--
Friday morning, March 24, 2024 we departed our home in Georgetown on our two month odyssey with the ultimate destination of Magee Marsh for the Birdiest Week in American on Lake Erie. Our first destination is to join our Good Water Master Naturalists Chapter for a field trip to the Caves of Sonora. The plan is to take a tour of the cave on Saturday morning and visit the Eaton Hills Nature Preserve in the afternoon. From there we will spend the next few weeks working on our Texas Century Club program. The Century Club is sponsored by the Texas Ornithological Society and its goal is to identify one-hundred bird species in one hundred Texas counties. Our objective in sponsoring this program was to encourage greater efforts in documenting bird species in many Texas counties which were not regularly being surveyed, thus improve our understanding of the diversity and distribution of birds within Texas. Many counties, especially along the Texas coast, along the Rio Grande River, and in large metropolitan areas, are frequently birded while most others go almost un-birded. I might note there are currently 5 or 6 over achievers who have done this in all 254 counties of our State. And so we begin.
After we cleared Williamson County, we
Highway 29 all the way to where it intersects Highway 377 and turns toward Junction and I 10. It is Texas spring and the wildflower display along the route of travel was fantastic. Once we cleared Burnet the roadside was covered in Bluebonnets, punctuated by Indian Paints and some DYF’s. I once asked a park ranger while visiting Nacogdoches State Park what the many yellow flowers were that we were looking at and he quickly shot back “Damn yellow flowers” and that has stuck with me ever since. Our recent rains have also created pastures that are verdant green and, for the first time in a very long time, the ponds and creek beds have standing water in them, some nearly briming over. While our drought is clearly not over, things have improved immensely. As we headed down Highway 377 the roadside displays became populated with plants more conducive to an arid environment as well as a different soil. The predominant flower cover became purple vetch and different DYF’s. As the miles rolled by the landscape became primarily ash juniper and honey mesquite. On occasion there were short displays of Texas Bluebonnets, but they became few and far between. Traveling Texas highways are one of the annual highlights I really enjoy. I have recently been reading Roy Bedichek’s (a famous UT naturalist) “Adventures with a Texas Naturalist”. In this selection he provides a lengthy discussion of our highway system and how it has become a safe haven for native plants. He notes that highway and railroad rights-of-ways require that they be fenced off to keep livestock in, thus the areas not used for actual transportation space has become native plant arboretums. He goes on to report that he has taken surveys of both highway right-of-way and an exact same area inside the adjacent pasture only to affirm that native plants greatly outnumbered those on the right-of-way compared to that of fenced pasture land.
Saturday Deb & I headed to the Eaton Hills Nature Preserve to do some birding. This is our first tie to do and birding in Sutton County. While we were able to secure a few species, we were disappointed in the lack of birds this morning. By far the most, interesting of them was a Black-capped Vireo, a species that breeds in Texas and Oklahoma. We then returned to the Caverns for our tour of the cave. This is an unbelievable cave! I was blown away by what we saw. Our trip was 2 miles long underground, and we were told that below what we traveled was an equal amount of this cave. The cave is located on a 20,000-acre private ranch that was purchased shortly after the turn of the 20th century. However, cave wasn’t found until 1960 and it was done so accidently when one of the hunting dogs fell into the opening. To the great surprise of the ranch hand who had to retrieve the dog, there was a cave below him. This private cave has been developed with amazing care and is truly a beautiful site. I encourage all to take the time for a visit. Following our GWMN meeting at the preserver Deb & I took a drive out a Ranch Road in search of more species to add to our list. While we got a few it was not real productive. Sutton county lacks any major, or for that matter, minor water sources which makes racking up the 100 species very difficult. We ended the day with 43, not bad for this county. I must mention the great lunch we had at La La’s, a local favorite. The hot sauce (my criteria for Mexican restaurants) was excellent. Highly recommended if you are passing through Sonora.
We woke up Sunday morning to an extremely windy day. In fact, the area was under a wind advisory and the wind persisted the entire day. Tonight, we are under a severe weather alert for rain and hail and I hope it doesn’t come to fruition. We packed up and drove the 70 miles to our next destination, Eden, Texas. Our travels took us across Sutton County in a northeasterly direction, entering Schleicher County for a brief time before crossing into Menard County and finally here in Concho County. The high winds keep roadside birding to a minimum and but for spotting a pair of Wild Turkey hens and numerous Turkey vultures, was a nonstarter. We arrived at our destination about noon and setup at Hidden Creek RV just south of Eden. It is a simple campground, water, electric & sewer, for $30 a night—a bargain these days. We took an hour drive in search of birds for our Concho list and only were able to add about 5, primarily for two reasons—wind and time of year. March is generally a very slow birding month for Texas—winter birds have departed, and breeding & migrant species have yet to arrive. We will spend the next three days birding Menard, Concho & McCulloch from our present location. All three are a short drive from this central location.
We got settled into our campground, then headed out to the Eden Water Treatment Plant (WTP)to see if we could add some water fowl. We were able to a few but most waterfowl departed for points north. We then proceeded to drive some county roads to see what we could turn up, It was afternoon and not the best time of day for birding, so we ended with just adding a few to our list. Our night turned out to be interesting! At 11:45 we were woken by the sound of a tornado siren. We jumped out of bed, Deb got dressed and we were perplexed as to what to do or where to go. I decided to call 911 since we were in a strange place. Fortunately, the operator informed us that the alarm that sounded was a glitch because they had no information from the weather bureau. Furthermore, they were the ones who would set off the system, so back to bed and sleep. At dawn we headed to Stockpen Crossing in Menard, a hotspot on eBird to try and add to our county list. We spent about half of the morning either there or at the adjacent county park, then took a drive down a county road heading west. We were able to add some birds, but not many. It was very quiet. From there we took the drive on CR 2029 to the Menard W TP plant were we were able to find Gadwall and Blue-winged Teal. Then continuing east on CR 2029 we happened on a Red-headed Woodpecker, a bird Deb found along the roadway. This is an unusual bird for this area, so we had to photograph it to support our eBird entry. We continued on this county road too both 5 & 10 mile crossing (where the San Saba river crosses the road) adding to our list as we traveled. We ended our Menard birding day with 64 species. Still 36 short of our goal of 100. We did however, add 27 new birds for this county.
Tuesday morning, we headed north to O. H. Ivie Reservoir to try and up our list there from 57 to the magical number—100. This day turned out to be rather disappointing. The morning was crisp, 35 degrees and the lake was very low. We did add Ash-throated Flycatcher and several other species in the park area but, overall, it was very disappointing. We went from the 57 we had recorded in an earlier visit to the current 73. This means another trip to this area for both Menard and Concho counties. After a short and disappointing visit to Lee Pflueger Park in Eden, we packed up and headed to McCulloch County and Richards Park in Brady. Looking at a promising eBird list we headed out to check a county road mentioned. After picking up two species we decided to head over to San Saba County just 30 miles away. In that county I had 99 and Deb had 95, and with a list we found on eBird with more than enough for both of us to finish the 100 needed, we struck out. Sure, enough the birds were at the WTP and we finished the afternoon with 106 for me an 103. I know have 34 of the 100 counties I’m shooting for, and Deb now had 27.
We spent most of Wednesday morning birding the Park which is an eBird hotspot and did add several new species to our list. We returned to the trailer for a quick coffee, then headed out to Brady Lake. Our list now stood at 95 and we could smell finishing this county. We did better than that, we finished with 106 species. When we arrived at the lake, no sooner than getting out of the car we heard a Yellow-throated Vireo singing loudly nearby. In addition, we added, Spotted Sandpiper, Greater Yellowlegs, American Pipit, and both Cave and Cliff Swallows. Satisfied we returned to the trailer for lunch. The afternoon was spent wondering some roads in nearby Mason County. The trip produced a nice list of birds for the county, but we only improved our number by one. We head to Mason County on Thursday.
So I’m going to submit this first blog. More to come.
