At Any Costa's

Costa's Hummingbird, El Paso, TX

Bob Friedrichs and I were up bright and early and headed to the hummer house, making it there at 7:45 am. Hummingbirds were active and we watched multiple Anna's Hummingbirds chasing around. We divided up searching Bob taking the backyard and myself in the front.

Not very long after we got there a smaller bird made an appearance just as Bob came back to the front yard. This looked like the bird we had seen photos of, smaller, darker headed, looked like it had a bolder collar than any of the Anna's we had seen. It was having a bad hair day too, it showed a very unruly crown. It flew down inside the tree and perched deep inside. We struggled for a good photo. The Anna's were bullies and chased it several times. From the chasing birds we saw some garnet red flashes of color, not the purple of a Costa's. We couldn't be sure in the chase what bird we were seeing though.

This continued for some time. Bob decided to stake out the back feeder hoping for a Broad-billed Hummingbird that had been reported coming to that feeder. I staked out another feeder that the Costa's was reported to favor.

Our mystery bird made a few appearances at this feeder, but from my angle was hard to see. I never saw the gorget color. Bob returned from the backyard and this time he caught a glimpse of purple he thought. It was looking better and better for this bird. Still we weren't sure. Bothering us was the tail looked long in the photos too.

No one had really seen the bird for 7 days now. It had not been identified right away when it was photographed and no one had been able to look for it since. Compounding the problem was the original photo showed the bird in heavy molt and it would be expected to change a lot in a week. Our bird had more feathers in the gorget, but that's to be expected.

We called it a day after 3 hours and headed out to prospect for more birds. We circulated the best photo to our Hummingbird Guru and he confirmed Costa's Hummingbird for Year Bird 490. He also thought the tail looked ok since males have longer tails. Unlike a lot of year birds at this point I feel more relief than elation, this one was a struggle.

We hit some spots in El Paso County prospecting with nothing all that uncommon being found. At a dairy feedlot on Hudspeth County right next to the highway we found about a hundred Yellow-headed blackbirds mixed in with the thousands of Brewer's Blackbirds.

Probably a hyper-marked Herring Gull
Lake Balmorhea 

We made it to Lake Balmorhea with time for some gulling before it got dark. It was windy now and the lake churned like the ocean. We found some gulls though and it took little time to identify Ring-billed and Franklin's Gulls.

We moved around the lake. An interesting gull flew at us and Bob jumped out to photograph it. On the water I spotted another gull that looked interesting. It had a very strong scapular pattern. I circulated some photos. A few who felt California Gull, and more that liked Herring Gull. Gulls can be a challenge and some defy easy answers.

Remember that gull in flight that Bob was photographing? Later reviewing the photographs, it was a California Gull. With gulls shoot first and ask questions later is often good advise.

We headed into Fort Stockton and got one of the last rooms in town. We celebrated with pizza and beer. We got word of a great bird we had to figure out if we could get in the morning.