From South Padre Island Birding Nature & Alligator Sanctuary
Naturalist Educator, Javi, had a big surprise while birding in the front gardens this past Monday (his day off)!
He flushed an extremely rare to our area, Flammulated Owl that spooked him when it perched in front of him and turned around to look at him with its big pitch black eyes, which are an identifying characteristic of the species!
This tiny, mainly insectivorous, owl is migratory. They breed in the US in the spring and summer in high elevation western mountain ranges and migrate south to Mexico and Central America in the fall to spend the winter where there's more bugs to eat.
Javi got to see a lot of his birding friends that day as they showed up soon after to enjoy the normally extremely hard to see species sleeping low in a tree.
This record is only the 2nd time this species has been recorded in the LRGV (*Lower Rio Grande Valley)! The first was also on SPI (*South Padre Island) in 2012-2013.
It couldn't be found the next day. Is it still around and will make another appearance? Or did it migrate on?
