On the Edge

The guru led a tour of the habitat border between East and Central Texas on Saturday. I had noticed that the flora is markedly different between Dallas and the eastern border, but it happens so gradually on the trip that it was worthwhile to trace it scientifically for once.

I drove this time and secretly resolved never to pick on him again for driving errors. It is difficult to be a good birder and a good driver simultaneously, though there were times when I was neither.

The first lake-bordering neighborhood we drove through took two times around to find the public recreation area, but three factors pushed us on right away:

• There was nothing apparently on the water
• There were no public paths along the waterside
• There were several residents dressed in native hunting garb standing around a pickup truck at the waterside and staring at us

Down the road we parked by a bridge and scanned the water; Ruddy Ducks, Ring-necked Ducks, Lesser Scaup and Buffleheads congregated a good ways out. David spotted a tern over the water, but it never came cooperatively close. He identified it by elimination: Forster's.

At Lake Tawakoni (pronounced Tah-WAH-koh-nee, I found), we hung out by the spillway and watched hundreds of vultures, mostly Black, roosting in the mud. David ventured down a steep concrete slope while I watched from firm upper ground. He asked me what kind of sparrow sat on the fence. It only took him listing two or three field marks until I figured it was a Savannah Sparrow. I don't think I'll ever learn enough birders' lingo to succeed at sparrows.

On a wooded path near the spillway, we were about to venture under the trees when a large, black bird with white wingtips sped by low overhead. Caracara! we both thought, and watched it until it shortly disappeared. Neither of us expected one in this location, nor the White-breasted Nuthatches in the trees. With some Sibley research, we determined that this would be one of the only places in which one could see both the caracara and the nuthatch. Yay for habitat overlap!

Later, near a bridge over the same lake, David wandered out onto another steep concrete slope, this time managing to lead me partway out as well. Wilson's Snipe also inhabited the slope further forward, and Northern Shovelers dabbled in the muck. After a tense moment on the return trip, the possibility of falling and dying was virtually eliminated and we proceeded to another bridge.

This one was quite rewarding. White things with gray above and below flapped around over the distant water, and I managed to identify them correctly as gulls; the guru did the rest by informing me that the leading white on the wing confirmed them as Bonaparte's Gulls. This impressive name fit them well, and they were the most interesting gulls I've ever looked at.

Least Sandpipers and a Spotted Sandpiper poked the mud. A pelican glided over. An American Pipit started out far away and blending with the mud, but it fearlessly approached us and we watched it turn for us at every conceivable angle. I wonder if it aspires to calendar modeling.

The incessant honking of a hybrid muscovy behind persuaded us finally to move on. We wanted to reach Matthews' Prairie before sundown. The said prairie was next door to nowhere and the tall grasses didn't look inviting; we plunged into it, however, in hopes of longspurs, sparrows, and maybe a Short-eared Owl.

Nothing flushed but meadowlarks, but David occasionally looked up at a large flock of blackbirds, convinced that the call he heard was not Red-winged. We approached the perched ones carefully in the waning daylight, hoping to confirm that they might be Brewer's Blackbirds. These nest at my parents' house, but seeing them in East Texas would be an entirely different matter.

Finally they calmed to the point that we could clearly distinguish the yellow eye of the males. At this point, we could see several Red-winged Blackbirds there too. David's sharp ear picked out a Bewick's Wren's scold from the low brush, and soon we spotted the little brown rascal. It was browner than the ones I see in the Cross Timbers area, just like Sibley warned (funny how that always happens).

As the twilight deepened, several harriers cruised low over the grass and we scanned them for owls. My fingers got colder and colder until David spotted the owl far away. Only several minutes of waiting brought it straight at us, haunting yellow eye, flat face and all. It took our breath until it disappeared in a dive greatly resembling the water hunters we had seen earlier. Hunting this way over land seemed quite a bit more treacherous, but though David assured me that owls have necks, I knew they would be hard to break.

We drove back to civilization hungry, tired, and satisfied. We had earned the Italian food to which we treated ourselves: fifty-two species in half a day. Three life birds for me and my first owl.