RGVBF - Day one

OK so it's now been a full week since the festival started and it's high time I started posting about the trip. I had planned on posting about each day on that evening, but many factors interfered with my plans. First - I was having a lot of fun"post-processing" my pics each evening (ie deleting all the blurry ones, duplicates, photos of empty branches, etc then bringing the acceptable ones into photoshop to crop/brighten etc.) Then there was the issue of intermittent internet service at the hotel. I called "tech support" a few times, but never was able to get it working consistently, and when I did have service, I was selfishly catching up on e-mail, facebook, following the local sightings, etc. And then I was often falling asleep at the computer since we were getting up at 4am each day. (And I wasn't sleeping very soundly because of the damn chigger bites that covered the lower 50% of my body)
Anyway - enough excuses! Let's get to it, shall we?

Day one of the festival. Since Pamela and I have been to the Rio Grande Valley in the past, and were pretty familiar with many of the local hot-spots like Bentsen, Santa Ana NWR, and Laguna Atascosa SP, we decided to use the festival as an opportunity to explore some of the locations a little further out of the way. Our first trip was to travel to Zapata and San Ygnacio - and to quote the festival literature: "Let's get right to it: White-collared Seedeaters" Yep, this was one of the birds I had wanted to get on my list. Not to mention, these areas a little farther north of the valley also provided an opportunity for ABA-countable Red-billed Pigeons and Muscovey Ducks - two more potential big 'ticks' for my list. We arrived at the convention center at 4:30am (along with a few dozen others) to board the bus for our 2.5 hour ride to look for these specialities. By the way, the folks that put the convention together seem to think of everything - at the convention center they had a cafe that was serving coffee starting at 4am! Our first attempt at the seedeaters at the pond near the library in Zapata (one of the more accessible and reliable spots for these birds) turned up only a potential fleeting glance for one or two people. (Which might have had something to do with the construction vehicles nearby.) While missing the seedeaters, I was (no surprise) watching woodpeckers like this female Ladder-backed:
After working it for an hour or so, we boarded the bus again, and continued on to San Ygnacio, where we met a local manager of a small sanctuary there along the Rio Grande. There were plenty of birds to be seen, including great looks at Verdin and Bewick's Wren, and great comparative views of Neotropic and Double-crested Cormorants, but none of the three target birds. Then it was time for lunch (bag lunch provided by the festival!) at a nice bluff that overlooked the river. The highlight here for me (beyond the wonderful view) was a Black Witch moth that joined us. (Here seen going for one of our leader's sandwich)

After lunch we had time for another try at the seedeaters at our first stop. We split the group up into a few groups and spread out to search for the birds. Within about 10 minutes, there were alerts from both ends of the pond that the bird had been spotted. We got around in time to see the female showing in pretty nice light, but we missed the male. She was quite active and lively, and since this was a life bird - I spent more time watching than photographing her, but here is a poor photo of my life White-collared Seedeater.
I tried searching for the male a bit longer, but the call had gone out that we had to leave, so we boarded the bus - a big group of happy birders. This little seedeater was a 'lifer' for just about everybody on the bus, and with the help of our leaders, everybody got it.


(Meanwhile, Jeff Gordon posted that everybody on his King Ranch trip had got great looks at Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl and crippling looks at Sprague's Pipit - which whetted my appetite for our own Friday morning trip to the Ranch - to be posted soon!)