The Muse is Loose

Saturday morning at about 6:30 our defending Coastal Birding champs, the Rockport Roadrunners,will hit the road for eight straight hours of birding fun. It is unpredictable where the birds will be. There were many last Saturday but the weather has changed. My team members,
Emily Duprie, Savannah Rozacky, and Olivia Smith will find the birds if they are there. They are good. We will begin at Port Aransas. From there we will go down North Padre Island, then over to Corpus Christi and Blucher Park. From Blucher we will go back to Rockport and then on to beyond Beeville for some ranch country birds. Gayle Rozacky will be our driver. Valerie Smith will be our tabulator. Our goal is high. We want to find one hundred species in those eight hours. Last year we won with eighty-seven, but we expect tougher competition this year. We only won by one bird last year.
Speaking of birds, I added a "lifer" today.( That is a bird I have never seen before.) Where was it?
In the parking lot of HEB Rockport!! The world famous birding tour guide, Victor Emmanuel, was getting gas at HEB yesterday. He heard the call of a tropical kingbird. A brief search led him to an oak tree left in the parking lot. The bird was building a nest high in the tree. I wish all lifers were that easy! "Uncommon and local in southeastern Arizona and Rio Grande Valley in Texas". Since we aren't in either of those places we are lucky to get the bird in a grocery store parking lot.