#796 Chihuahuan Raven
Saturday, I took another leisurely (only six hours) trip south to the border. The attraction this time was access to the Nature Conservancy’s Southmost Preserve, a site not normally open to the public. This is next door to Sabal Palms and shares a lot of the fauna with that site. However we did get several new species for the trip, mostly as flyovers including Snow Goose, Ross’s Goose, Greater White-fronted Goose (which I initially mistook as a life bird–I don’t know why I never remember that I’ve seen this one before. I’ve tallied it as a lifer multiple times in multiple states. Somehow it’s just really forgettable.) and #796 Chihuahuan Raven.
I wad the 50mm lens on my camera when the flock flew over (I was practicing digiscoping) so no pictures. Basically it looks like a crow, or a raven; but there are no other crows or ravens around here so a flock of 24 large black birds bigger than Grackles pretty much has to be Chihuahuan Raven, though if one were side-by-side with a Common Raven I’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart.
Other species at the site included, in taxonomic order:
- Greater White-fronted Goose
- Snow Goose
- Ross’s Goose
- Gadwall
- Mottled Duck
- Blue-winged Teal
- Northern Shoveler
- Neotropic Cormorant
- Double-crested Cormorant
- Great Blue Heron
- Snowy Egret
- Black-crowned Night-Heron
- Roseate Spoonbill
- Turkey Vulture
- White-tailed Kite
- Northern Harrier
- Red-shouldered Hawk
- Red-tailed Hawk
- American Kestrel
- American Coot
- Killdeer
- Black-necked Stilt
- American Avocet
- Solitary Sandpiper
- Greater Yellowlegs
- Western Sandpiper
- Least Sandpiper
- Dunlin
- Long-billed Dowitcher
- Wilson’s Snipe
- Forster’s Tern
- Rock Pigeon
- Mourning Dove
- Inca Dove
- Common Ground-Dove
- White-tipped Dove
- Buff-bellied Hummingbird
- Belted Kingfisher
- Green Kingfisher
- Golden-fronted Woodpecker
- Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
- Ladder-backed Woodpecker
- Northern Flicker
- Eastern Phoebe
- Great Kiskadee
- Couch’s Kingbird
- Green Jay
- Chihuahuan Raven
- Northern Rough-winged Swallow
- Tree Swallow
- Carolina Wren
- House Wren
- Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
- Ruby-crowned Kinglet
- Eastern Bluebird
- Northern Mockingbird
- Long-billed Thrasher
- Northern Waterthrush
- Orange-crowned Warbler
- Common Yellowthroat
- Yellow-rumped Warbler
- Wilson’s Warbler
- Clay-colored Sparrow
- Field Sparrow
- Vesper Sparrow
- Lark Sparrow
- Savannah Sparrow
- Lincoln’s Sparrow
- White-crowned Sparrow
- Summer Tanager
- Northern Cardinal
- Pyrrhuloxia
- Dickcissel
- Red-winged Blackbird
- Yellow-headed Blackbird
- Great-tailed Grackle
Besides the Chihuahuan Ravens, 111 of these were state birds for Texas. White-tipped Dove was also an ABA area bird, although I had seen it previously in Panama.
