By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Even though it may not feel like it, the long, hot south Texas summer is coming to an end.
I follow a Facebook group called Birding Texas!, and this morning, one of its members from Corpus Christi reported seeing a Baltimore Oriole, a Canada Warbler and Buff-bellied Hummingbirds, all signs that the fall migration has begun once again.
I made my way to the Rincon Del Diablo – what my friend George Lomas calls “God’s little acre” – Sunday morning to see if I could spy any early migrants.
I didn’t see any migrants, but I did find an active pair of Summer Tanagers and spent the better part of an hour following them.
In Texas, when most folks say “redbird,” they mean male Northern Cardinals, but the only true all red bird in North America is the male Summer Tanager.
Adult male Summer Tanagers are strawberry red and look completely different from their mates: female Summer Tanagers are a dull, mustard yellow all over.
As their name implies, these birds are summer residents in the United States, from southern California east across the southern U.S. and north to the Great Lakes mainly east of the Mississippi River.
The Rincon was mostly quiet Sunday morning, and I found the male tanager because he was perched in a tall pecan delivering his distinctive pit-chuck! call. I walked around the tree and scared up the tanager’s mate, who flew into a mesquite tree nearby to check me out.
Summer Tanagers are insect eaters, and they specialize in catching bees and wasps. The birds snap up these flying insects, and then beat them against a tree branch to kill them.
Like many other species, the Summer Tanagers will soon be leaving us for their wintering grounds in Central and South America. Interestingly, Mike and I had a female Summer Tanager on the Christmas Count two years ago, a very unusual occurrence.
The Rincon on Sunday was also full of dragonflies of several different species.
The vast majority of them seemed to be Red Saddlebags, but that could be because this species tends to perch conspicuously.
I found a type of dragonfly called a Wandering Glider, sometimes called a Globe Skimmer. It is considered one of the most widespread dragonfly species on the planet and can be found on every continent except Antarctica.
Like the more known Monarch butterflies, Wandering Gliders are also known to migrate, sometimes flying thousands of miles.
Other interesting facts about this dragonfly include that it has been recorded in the Himalaya at more than 20,000 feet and was the first dragonfly species found after nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Too soon, it was time to head home, but I’ll be back soon to look for early migrants.
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Contact the author at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
