Henry joined me today on a canoe trip down the Rio Grande. We started about 2 miles north of the main headquarters of the Santa Anna National Wildlife Refuge. We had about 14 people and 6 canoes. While some canoes had three, Henry and I got to have our own. We had a reporter and camera man on our trip. Our guides were two young men, one a graduate student from Chicago, the other a Nikon representative. The refuge also sent a guide with us.
It seemed to me that the birding in some ways was a little thin. We could hear a lot of birds in the trees around the river, but we did not see many of the smaller birds. The most common bird was the spotted sandpiper. We had good looks at many of the heron family - a family of white crowned night herons, several blue herons, snowy egret, great egret, cattle egret, and green heron. We saw all three kingfishers . . . . A really good sighting of the green kingfisher. Several raptors. One of the guides heard and saw the grooved bill Ani. That's on my list of birds I had not seen. Unfortunately, he ducked right back into the brush, so I'm still waiting to see him.
I'm learning to accept that on any given birding trip, no one will see all the birds. Sometimes you're not in the right place and the bird moves quickly away. Sometimes, even with directions, it is hard to spot a little bird in a big tree or brushy thicket. But the nice thing about going with experienced birders, they not only see the birds, but they recognize many of the songs.
The disadvantage of the canoe trip was that we tended to stay scattered along the river making it hard to hear what someone else was saying when they were first sighting birds.
But I don't get to take many canoe trips. There is something very peaceful and satisfying about going along at slow speed along the river. I hope to take this canoe trip again.
P.S. I took a lot of pictures of the people on this trip. In the next couple of weeks I'll try to get them posted on my website.
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