Some interesting birds from Louisiana and Texas

As part of our Wader Quest Elis and I found ourselves in Louisiana and Texas. Now everyone knows that birding the Gulf coast in April means you'll see much more than shorebirds, and so it proved for us too. This Common Nighthawk was on a fence post along the beach in Cameron Parish.

Common Nighthawk

I placed a shot of this Painted Bunting as one of my favourites in the right column of this blog, here's another of this gaudy little stunner.

Painted Bunting

My first Yellow-billed Cuckoo in the USA, I have seen several Black-billed before but not this species, although I had previously seen both in the UK, on the Isles of Scilly to be precise.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo

We saw a good number of these and also Indigo Buntings, sometimes there was so much colour in a tree that it looked like Christmas had come early, these blue birds, yellow warblers, red tanagers and green vireos, wonderful birding.

Blue Grosbeak

Mixed in with the grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds we came across a few Yellow-headed Blackbirds, our first was near Welsh where Steve Cardiff and Donna Dittman took us to look for waders, but it was Elis that spotted it first that time.

Yellow-headed Blackbird

Not very rare and rather widespread, it is still always good to see the Purple Martins, the males, when they catch the light are glorious.

Purple Martins

Another hirundine and a tick for me, these Cave Swallows would have eluded us if it had not been for Steve and Donna.

Cave Swallow

Wood Duck is contender for the most beautiful duck in the world (possibly being pipped at the post by Mandarin), we only saw this male and its mate during the whole trip.

Wood Duck