You thought I would write about the Super Bowl. Everyone else will take care of that...if you even care. I picked Green Bay by FOUR and announced it at the close of church yesterday. Ho Hum.
No, let me tell you about something you most likely have not read about....may not care about it either.
Saturday, Bob and Jimmie Box, Ann and I, thought we would give a try at seeing a "rare" bird reported at Goose island State Park. Goose Island Park is just across a causeway leading out of Rockport. It is less than thirty minutes from the house. As we went through the gate a park person told us where we might find it. There was only ONE. This bird is commonly called a Yellow Faced Grassquit. It is a member of the Emberizidae family, "little brown jobs" of the sparrow birds.
How do you find a single little brown bird in a rather large park of woods, grasses, and water? You look, not for the bird, but for birders! They were easily found, closely grouped together with their varied field glasses pointing ground-ward at the edge of a clearing. There were also a couple of telescopes that surely must have come from Mount Palomar. It is best to open and close vehicle doors quietly, and like a jackal moving in on a lion's kill, step carefully and with whispers. Birders are usually friendly folks, if treated with courtesy. They can turn on you like an angry lion if you crowd them too much. We didn't have to push and shove. I saw the grassquit easily from a park bench. It was a "lifer".( That is a first-time ever bird.) We all had beautiful looks at a bird called "accidental" in Texas. An "accidental" is a bird seen five times or less in the last THIRTY YEARS! You see, this was a RARE bird.
Where was this Yellow-Faced Grassquit from? It had ended up here from Mexico or South America. It's first cousin, the Black-Faced Grassquit, is a rare bird sometimes seen in Southern Florida.(seven times) It finds home in the West Indies.
Whether you are "in" to birds or not you can easily see how unusual a sighting this was. About like seeing a panther or jaguar! (Not the car). Earlier Saturday we had seen THREE whooping cranes up close along the St Charles Bay in Lamar. They decided to relocate and flew almost over our car at low, low height. These gigantic, endangered birds with wing span of seven feet are something to see. Nice Saturday of birding.
