13 de agosto de 2018

Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch

I recently finished five months of work at the Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch in Fisher County, Texas. When I started work at the ranch there were only 14 observations from the 5000 acre property and only 262 for the whole county! On ebird there were only 88 species recorded on the ranch and 174 from Fisher County. My main job was to drive around the ranch and monitor radio collared Bobwhite and Scaled Quail so I had a great opportunity to expand the observations and species recorded from the ranch and Fisher County.

When I finished working at the ranch I had added 550 observations of 190 species, 31 birds to the ranch list, and 7 birds to the county list. Some notable observations include: The first North American Least Shrew (Cryptotis parva) in West Texas, the first Crested Caracara (Caracara cheriway) for Fisher County on ebird, and a weird growth on a Texas Prickly-Pear (Opuntia engelmannii).

I greatly enjoyed my time at the quail ranch and the opportunities to travel to Big Bend and the AOS Conference in Tucson. I'll be starting my new job as an Avian Keeper at the Caldwell Zoo in Tyler, Texas in a few days and I'm excited to contribute to inaturalist and ebird for Smith County and East Texas.

Publicado el agosto 13, 2018 06:59 TARDE por jbroadhead jbroadhead | 3 observaciones | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

28 de febrero de 2018

Moving to Texas

In a couple weeks I'll be packing my things and moving to the Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch to be a quail technician for the summer. My plan is to take 6 days to get there so that I can detour to the Rio Grande. I've never been to Texas before so I'm hoping to see a ton of life birds, herps, mammals, and plants. Since there's several places I want to see in such short time I'll be going sunrise to sunset and only spend 1-4 hours at each place and then revisit one or two before I start heading north.

Day 1
Drive as far south as I can with a couple stops to stretch my legs and see some birds.

Day 2
Laguna Atascosa NWR (Aplomado Falcon and waders)
Brownsville Landfill (Tamaulipas Crow)
Sabal Palm Sanctuary (Least Grebe)
Oliveira Park (Parrots)

Day 3
Resaca de la Palma Sanctuary and World Birding Center
Estero Llano Grande State Park (Common Pauraque)
Frontera Audubon Society
Santa Ana NWR (Hook-billed Kite and Kingfishers)

Day 4
Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park
Revisit 1 or 2 places

Day 5
Laredo (White-collared Seedeater)

Day 6
Lost Maples State Natural Area (Golden-cheeked Warbler and Black-capped Vireo)
Arrive at the Ranch

I'm open to suggestions as to where I should or shouldn't stop and how much time I should be allocating to each place. Also I'm hoping to take a weekend trip to Big Bend in late April to search for Colima Warbler. I'll be ebirding and iNatting the whole way!

Publicado el febrero 28, 2018 06:22 TARDE por jbroadhead jbroadhead | 3 comentarios | Deja un comentario

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