South Texas Birds and Butterflies Nov 11—16, 2007
Posted by Michael O'Brien
Michael O'Brien
Michael O'Brien is a freelance artist, author, and environmental consultant living in Cape May, New Jersey. He has traveled extensively throughout North and Central Ame...Related Trips
This was VENT's second annual South Texas Birds & Butterflies tour, but for Michael and Louise, this was our very first VENT tour. What a way to start! Not only was it nice to lead a tour in our virtual home-away-from-home, the Rio Grande Valley, but it was also an absolute delight to feel free to look at EVERYTHING—just the way we like to run a natural history tour. We found a nice balance between birding in the morning, then butterflying as it warmed up, all the while taking time to look at dragonflies, other interesting insects, mammals, herps, or whatever else we crossed paths with. We owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the local birding and butterflying community for sharing information and keeping us posted about where the hot spots were. In particular, we would like to thank Marci and Terry Fuller and Mary Gustafson for calling us whenever they heard about something they thought our group would like to see. There's no question that we saw more as a result.
It turned out to be a spectacular fall for butterflies in the Valley, and our tour probably saw the peak diversity for the season. Butterfly populations in the Valley vary considerably from year to year—far more than do bird populations. This is due to a variety of factors including variations in brood timing, as well as variations in weather through the summer and fall, not only in the Valley but also in Northeast Mexico, the source of most of our immigrants. Butterflies also reproduce much more quickly than birds do, so under good conditions their production rate may be very high.
Our tour saw an amazing 104 species of butterflies in just four full days in the field! This includes a long list of species that are "normally" very uncommon to rare in the Valley (but were more numerous this year), as well as a few real rarities. Some of the highlights were Ruby-spotted Swallowtail, White Angled-Sulphur, Curve-winged Metalmark, Band-celled Sister, Common Banner, Red Rim, Gray Cracker, Pavon and Silver Emperors, and Pale-rayed Skipper. These are on top of some of the usual Valley specialties like Giant White, Silver-banded Hairstreak, Lacey's and Lantana Scrub-Hairstreaks, Blue Metalmark, Red-bordered Pixie, Crimson Patch, Banded Peacock, Malachite, Mexican Bluewing, Two-barred Flasher, Glazed Pellicia, and Brown-banded Skipper.
Birding was also excellent. Having run weeklong birding tours in the Valley for many years, we were a little nervous about our chances to see everything in just four full days in the field, especially considering how much time we would spend butterflying. Although there were no particular rarities around, our bird list of 172 species is just as impressive as our butterfly list. Given time constraints, we didn't try for some of the more remote specialties like White-collared Seedeater or Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl, but we did manage to see the majority of the Valley specialties such as Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, Plain Chachalaca, Least Grebe, Gray and White-tailed hawks, Aplomado Falcon, White-tipped Dove, Green Parakeet, Buff-bellied Hummingbird, Ringed and Green kingfishers, Golden-fronted Woodpecker, Great Kiskadee, Tropical and Couch's kingbirds, Green Jay, Black-crested Titmouse, Clay-colored Robin, Long-billed Thrasher, Olive Sparrow, and Altamira and Audubon's orioles. These, combined with a wide selection of waterbirds along the coast and a handful of desert species out west, made for a wonderful birding experience.