Birding at Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge

 

I like to keep track of what the expert birders in the Valley are doing at  RGVBirding on Facebook.  Right now they are excited about a Bat Falcon that is way out of his range. 

This is a picture of the Bat Falcon and information about him from https://ebird.org/species/batfal1:

"Dashing small falcon of tropical lowlands and foothills. Prefers forest edge, adjacent semi-open areas with tall trees, buildings. Found at several Maya ruins in Mexico and northern Central America, also locally in towns. Looks dark overall with a contrasting white throat, and in flight can be confused with White-collared Swift. With a good view, note the rusty belly and ‘trousers.’ Hunts bats at dusk, but main food is small birds caught in flight."

We arrived about 3 PM and parked the car in the parking lot and talked to some birders and found out that the bird has been hanging around at the entrance to the park in the afternoon. So we walked out to the entrance of the park and joined the throng of the very serious birders waiting for the Bat Falcon to arrive. Here is the pole that he likes to use. It is right across the street from where everyone was standing.

You can tell these are the serious birders by just taking a look at their equipment. One of these days maybe we will bite the bullet and get some serious birding camera. 

After more than two hours of waiting, I got bored and tired of standing so I took a little walk in the area just to move around a little. Here are the picture from my little excursion.

After my walk, I went back to where Lee was still standing and we waited some more. It was a very long wait because the Bat Falcon didn't arrive until dusk and it was really too dark to get any good pictures of him. This was the best that we could do.