Texas Roadtrip, Part 2: Our first main stop was Big Bend National Park in western Texas,
where we went mainly for the birds. Here’s what we discovered there…

How many birds did we find?

Before I answer that, let me first say that it was entirely our own fault. We simply did not get ourselves up and out in the early hours, when everyone knows birds are most active. Why doesn’t matter: it just didn’t happen. So out of the 450 bird species that have been identified in Big Bend National Park, we found… (drumroll please!) …forty. (Ron and Linda, we need you!)

But, you know, it’s not really about the numbers. As I’ve written here before, birding for me — for us — is chiefly about the delight of finding and identifying new birds or finding familiar birds in new places. And of spending time outdoors in beautiful or interesting settings. And of taking pictures. 

Birding hotspots

We were in Big Bend National Park in western Texas for four full days, and during that time we visited several of the recommended birding hotspots. In this dry land, birds typically seek out places where there’s water. Some of the most promising birding sites are down by the Rio Grande, so the first day we followed Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive out to the river and hiked up Santa Elena Canyon.

There we found this pyrrhuloxia and a canyon wren (see below) posing for photos.

Another day we walked the nature trail near the Rio Grande Village campground, where aluminum bridges cross reed-filled wetlands, and many birds hang out in the cool of the morning (i.e., well before we arrived!). However, I did finally get a decent photograph of a vermillion flycatcher (above), as well as a black phoebe.

A black phoebe regularly visits our garden at home, so it was a special treat to meet this familiar friend in a very different environment.

Our favorite birding hotspot turned out to be the Sam Nail Ranch, where a windmill occasionally springs to life and sends a thin stream of water spurting out of a pipe, where birds regularly fly in to quench their thirst, where a bench waits invitingly near the windmill, and where, if you sit long enough, you’re bound to see some activity. We went there twice.

I glimpsed a phainopepla there, and I was thrilled to photograph this handsome male northern cardinal — though his baleful glare suggests that he might have felt otherwise about being my model!

Is hearing believing?

Craig and I agree that Merlin’s Sound ID has totally transformed the birding experience for us. (See my previous post — link below.) Where once we would walk through an area thick with invisible birds, feeling frustrated, we now turn on the Sound ID function, and up pop up the names of any birds Merlin “hears.” It’s not perfect, but by cross-checking our lists and verifying the range of a listed bird, we can feel reasonably comfortable in our identifications.

I still prefer to get my eyes on a bird — having the typical American preference for visual over auditory information — and, happily, in some cases we did later see birds that before we had only heard. For example, the app kept telling us there were verdins — a bird I’d never heard of —  in the area. We looked and looked but never spied so much as a tail flicker, until our last day when we walked the Rio Grande nature trail. Merlin hit on the verdin, and we heard enough chirps to convince us that there were quite a few of these little birds around. We stood quietly, scanning the trees, and at last I spied one. And got its picture! Then, a little later, we noticed another verdin flying in and out of a wooded area, and I spotted its nest. So Merlin was right, and I have the photos to prove it!

Making a peep!

Every time we set Merlin to listening, a few distinctive voices seemed to dominate. On our hike around the Chisos Basin, chattering Mexican jays drowned out most of the other birds.

The jays reminded me of those over-eager students who are always talking out of turn, so that their quieter classmates can’t get a chirp in edgewise. I remember a song that I learned in second grade from my teacher, Mrs. Groch:

In a snug little field by a neighboring park
on a beautiful morning in spring,
a pert little magpie once asked of a lark
if he thought he could teach him to sing.
“Oh, no,” said the lark, with a comical look,
as he wiggled and waggled his tail,
“‘Twould be too much trouble and sorrow,
for I know I most surely would fail!
For he who won’t listen the art of the teacher defies,
and birds that chatter can never expect to be wise!”

Mrs. Groch was one of those wonderful teachers who are also a bit terrifying, as I think most of my best teachers were. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized she might have had an ulterior motive in teaching her class of chattering second-graders this particular song!

In other parts of the park, we heard northern cardinals, pyrrhuloxia, and cactus wrens calling endlessly. In general, I’m remarkably bad at recognizing individual birds’ songs, but these yakety fellows were soon easy to pick out. I caught these cactus wrens — especially the second one — in full-throated warble.

Photo ID

There were a few birds — like these lark sparrows — that I couldn’t see well enough to identify on the fly (as it were). But I did manage to get a decent shot of these little guys, so that I could tell who they were from the photo.

The same was true of this black-throated sparrow. He was far away, but when I looked at his photo on my computer, he was easy enough to identify. This house finch was singing away, and since I’m familiar with his song, I didn’t doubt Merlin’s identification. But it was still satisfying to confirm the ID with a picture. And we saw these white-winged doves everywhere.

Finally, the list

Here’s our complete list of all the birds we saw at Big Bend National Park. Birds marked with “?” are those we heard but never saw well enough to identify — or didn’t see at all. 

1. common raven
2. great-tailed grackle
3. greater roadrunner
4. curve-billed thrasher
5. cactus wren
6. phainopepla
7. rock wren
8. canyon wren
9. pyrrholoxia
10. common yellow throat ?
11. white-throated swift ?
12. white-winged dove
13. vermillion flycatcher
14. lark sparrow
15. turkey vulture
16. Mexican jay
17. Say’s phoebe
18. canyon towhee
19. Bewick’s wren
20. spotted towhee ?
21. blue-gray gnatcatcher
22. black-tailed gnatcatcher
23. yellow-rumped warbler
24. northern mockingbird
25. northern cardinal
26. crissal thrasher ?
27. ladder-backed woodpecker
28. verdin
29. house finch
30. black-throated sparrow
31. white-crowned sparrow
32. song sparrow ?
33. ash-throated flycatcher
34. ruby-crowned kinglet
35. Eurasian collared dove
36. house sparrow
37. black phoebe
38. lesser goldfinch ?
39. Lincoln’s sparrow ?
40. fox sparrow ?

For the bonus…

Though our main interest was in birds, sometimes something else wandered across our path, like these Chihuahuan greater earless lizards.

• National Park Service: Big Bend: Bird Watching
• Alan Dundes: Seeing Is Believing (in Interpreting Folklore, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980)
• National Park Service: Big Bend: Lizards

You might also like…

• Our fine-feathered friends (about getting started with birding)
• An exotic visitor (about the vermillion flycatcher we saw in California, where he didn’t belong)
• All the little birdies go tweet-tweet-tweet (about Merlin’s Sound ID app)