Not sure where this myth about vacations being relaxing originated from. Obviously not from one of our outings, that’s for sure. We have been basically in birding “beast mode” since we headed south right after Christmas. The days leading up to the new year was focused on trying to reduce the gap from 300 – the days since have been a whirlwind of checks as the Average Year slate was wiped clean. Definitely two sides of the same coin. Every check at the end of the year felt like getting teeth pulled versus the check extravaganza beginning on the first. While Brad was entertaining you with his +1, Linda and I (and Ron while he was down here) were hitting the south Texas hotspots trying not to miss any key birds that are only accessible in this particular region. Time after the sun went down was spent trying to catch up on my mail (Sisyphus could relate) and doing my best to clean up the Birding Chronicles to close out 2022 and reset for 2023. I need to update the text, but I did get the plot captures updated – 2022 can be found here and the 2023 shell can be found here (note, for ease I added a quick summary on the title page (link here). Thanks to an amazing day today at Brazos Bend State Park, the 2023 stats are already out of date – my latest count is 170! Pretty good for only 20 days into the year.
In honor of the birding “beast mode”, thought I’d go with a beast of a different kind.
Hit the jump to learn more about our surprise while driving to one of our base camps on South Padre Island.
I need to give Linda full credit for this initial find. Last year about this same time, we were driving back from a trip to University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) in Brownsville, TX. We had dropped Ron off at the airport for his trip back home and had headed over to the southern most university in Texas – yes, those annoying billboards on the side of the road are surprisingly effective.
You may recall I was able to track down the Social Flycatcher on the land bridge on the campus that year. Ron missed it and for some strange reason I keep bringing it up whenever we are together.
“Today is really warm, like the day I tinned that Social Flycatcher and you were stuck in the airport security check?”
“Hey, did I ever mention that I was able to tin the Social Flycatcher while we were in Brownsville? took us to the third try, but…wait, you left after the second”
“Quick, Ron, check out that Eastern Phoebe – that reminds, be, remember that other Flycatcher we checked off on that Texas campus…oh, sorry”
We were driving back to SPI all happy about seeing the rare Flycatcher when Linda looked over to her left and exclaimed – ‘what in the hell is that!?!”.
Took me a bit to figure out what she was referring to, assuming it was some bird or possibly some form of rocket having recently visited Elon Musk’s SpaceX complex out on Boca Chica. After a bit more help I was able to zero in on the perplexing visual. The exact same feeling came over me when we found Shack the Zebra out on Smith Point Road near Laguna Atascosa NWR (link here). Did we take one too many lefts and end up on the Serengeti?
Linda managed to find a safe(r) place to pull off the road so I could get some shots. It was near the max reach of the Beast as it walked along an area managed under the Laguna Atascosa NWR. Not only did I not know what this creature was, my first impression is it was walking backwards. Finally managed to get a few shots that sliced through the heat vapors coming off the road and the sandy path it was walking across. Showed Linda and raised my hands – no clue, but we might have seen one in a zoo. In no time she grabbed her phone, whackamole’d some buttons with her thumbs and relayed the results – “It’s a Nilgai”. Surprised to learn it was Swahili for “weird beast that walks backwards”.
Okay, I lied. I even had the native region wrong. Nilgai is a Hindustani word meaning Blue Cow in recognition of the blue coloring of the adult bulls. So, how did an Indian Antelope find its way to the Texas border? Apparently, we have King Ranch to thank for this encounter, at least for the initial introduction in the area. They were brought in for paid trophy hunting (according to Internet references, they carry a $3,000 price tag full in with lodging and accessibility). Some of the clever beasts managed to escape and became self-sustaining along the Texas border. They are known for their ability to break through barbed wire fences…hello!. References estimate that there are now 30,000 Nilgai in the south Texas region with ~10,000 still resident on the Ranch. Although considered sacred in their homeland, they are very destructive to crops and surrounding land. Not sure if they are similarly considered “vermin” here in the South, but ones like this specimen who make it to the NWR have likely reached the promise land.
Since this initial encounter, Linda has been finding them quite regularly on our various travels through this area (especially this year!). I call her the Nilgai Whisperer as she can now pick these antelope out with ease calling them out regardless of how far away or how dense of habitat they happen to be strolling through. Surprisingly, this eagle-eye talent DOES NOT apply to finding the backs of her earrings…just saying ha.
Well, need to get my exercises done and get to bed – need to find a particular bird hiding out here at Brazos Bend SP and based on the current weather report, Bri’s gonna get wet doing it. Take care everyone and bear with me as I try to get caught up on your comments and reading everyone else’s incredible posts.
Wildlife Intrigued 
What an incredible critter you found! 😲
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Thank you! Have to give full credit to Linda for this find – I was likely hanging my head out the window looking up for birds and would have missed it completely! Appreciate you dropping in.
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Very nice. Not quite as colorful as the birds. Can it be considered a +1 for Wildlife?
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Definitely a +1 in the wildlife category! Linda has been spotting them all over the place on this trip to SPI.
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Jan is my wildlife spotter and bird whisperer.
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You and I are definitely lucky to have such good field assistants. Question is, can you trust Jan NOT to hit you with the monopod when things get dicey! In my case, Linda practices her swing technique every night.
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Yes, I think I can. I’m a quicker sprinter, but Jan does marathons. BTW, we both have monopods. And I’m the one that takes care of spiders at home.
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I have to take care of anything that slithers and from time to time those on legs (funny story about a mouse doing laps in our master bedroom at our old house I should relay sometime). Beyond that, Linda is pretty much a killing machine. Wildlife encounters is one of the few scenarios where the tortoise doesn’t come in first ha.
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Well, unlike the “tourists” to Yellowstone Park at least you didn’t try to get close enough to take a selfie with it only to see what happens in a close encounter.
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I’ve seen that Yellowstone scenario play out time and time again. The last one involved a lady running up to a bison to get a picture with her ipad – sitting right behind that mother (on the side we were were watching from) was her small calf – we decided she is lucky to still be alive…another bull happened to come by which stopped her before she hit the never-return-point. Thanks for coming by Jerry!
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I love the beast. Nice find after seeing the rare flycatcher. We have African beasts in New Mexico. When you see African Oryx down around White Sands it makes you wonder if you have wandered through a wormhole and ended up in Africa.
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I had to look that beast up – never heard of that one before – wow, that would be a hell of a surprise as well. I’ll have Linda keep an eye out for one of those next time we are down that way.
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Good luck at Brazos Bend. What a great place to explore!
I remember several encounters with King Ranch Kritters. Some in the middle of the night on a lonely backroad with a beastie refusing to budge from the asphalt. Interesting times.
Hope the weather cooperates for you.
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I bet – King Ranch remains a bit of a mystery to me, but I’ve been learning more and more about that outfit every time we come down here for the winter. Quite the operation. Up until yesterday, the weather had probably been the best we have had over the years. Rain and cold moved in, but hoping that clears out of here in a couple of days and get back to those great birding conditions.
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That’s pretty neat! I would have had no clue what that was.
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Definitely a surprise – thankfully Linda is well versed at Internet search ha. “Big brown/gray beast south texas”…Nilgai – we have a winner ha. Appreciate you dropping by.
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Hey! That was pretty cool. At first I thought it was an Oryx.
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Same thing Tim thought when he first saw it – as I responded to him, I was not aware of what an Oryx was – had to go look that one up … and showed it to Linda so she can be on the lookout for one…so I can post on it hehehehe. How are the blog issues coming?
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They are located around White Sands and they are strange to see. With all those big game farms in TX Linda might actually see one of those too. So keeping watching.
On the blog…well I am public again, I haven’t posted in a while to see what I am attracting. I keep getting hits from China – where I think my issues started from after I posted my Ukraine relief blogs…hummm… not sure what to do.
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I will have Linda keep a lookout – most of my issues come from Russia based domains.. that and the cialis horde that has nothing better to do than test my spam filters. I am close to just blocking all of Russia based account, but holding off a bit in case there is a real reader in that domain.
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I hear you! So how do you block on WP an entire country? I am absolutely ready to do that!
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I had more control when I was managing my own instance of WP off of a Godaddy account – could block complete access to the site. Probably as a start you could go into your Settings-Discussion area and simply disallow them from commenting “.ru.com” and see if that will get them to move along.
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Thanks Mr IT man! I really think my time with WP is limited… they announced they will start charging me the 21% Dutch VAT on my subscription, which I was already cringing about when I pay $300/yr. 🙄😳
Not sure this hobby is where I can best spend my limited money. Hummm… hopefully there is a solution.
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Holy cow $300/yr is steep! I’d go back to my Go-Daddy account and manage my own WordPress instance if I had to pay that price … even before you put on your VAT charge (which we, of course, do not have …yet).
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Yeah… pretty expensive hobby.
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What I love about birding (apart from birds), is the fact that one makes so many other fun and interesting discoveries. Your beastly encounter proves that fact.
Keep having fun!
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Never know what you are going to find out in the field – a few weeks ago, I apparently wronged the mother of a huge Cottonmouth in a past life and whatever kin I came too close to was ready to extract restitution. Never had an encounter that didn’t quickly move along, much less one that cocked to strike on me. Needless to say it took a couple of days to get my mojo back in the tall grass. On the other hand, Linda has been pretty firm on her opinion she DOESN’T need to experience any interesting discoveries ha. Take it easy Tanja and thanks for dropping in.
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That does sound daunting–I’m glad you are ok! Let’s hope that all other discoveries will be interesting only in a more relaxed and sedate kind of way!
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Beyond that “encounter” things have been more subdued beyond the standard pissed off Red-Winged Blackbird.. but those damn things are always pissed off…should have been named Red-Faced Blackbirds ha! On our slow trek back to the cold now boo.
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It must be Texas Red-winged Blackbirds you are talking about. I hear that many males in that state have an attitude. 😉
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Hehehehe – we’ve definitely seen a bit of that although most of our issues have come from a small cross-section of inconsiderate snowbirds.
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“And now for something completely different”! I’ve bumped into a few unexpected critters during my travels around here but none that wouldn’t be expected. Maybe a distant relative of Babe.
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Ha, definitely a surprise for us, although now that we are back down here we are getting used to seeing quite a lot of them – apparently once they made it to protected lands (read as NWR), they apparently started significantly increasing their numbers .. maybe they are just giant Rabbits!
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Amazing animals, and interesting how readily they have acclimated, though breaking through barbed wire fences is not going to make them friends of the ranchers down south. Any chance we could expect a story about the “birds” at SpaceX? I’ve had a hankering to go, and don’t know whether you can really see anything.
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We got the opinion that there were plenty of “residents” that were not as intrigued as we were that they were there. Seems to me they should know who to blame (KR). Two years ago when we were down there dropped over at Boca Chica and saw the launchpad..even had a rocket sitting on it as they were planning for a test…kept getting delayed so we never got witness it (this is when they were blowing up every on landing). This year we tried to make another visit but stopped by police on the way down the main road – they were doing some more tests and closed the road. Like last time, never saw (or rather heard) the tests this time either. I think that would be a good post idea – will try to work out some of our pictures and see what I can do. Thanks for dropping in Sam – hope you are feeling better.
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I found that out as well when traveling through Texas, they have brought in a lot of strange animals that are not from this part of the world. I thought the same thing, that they should be across the world 🙂
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Never know what oddities you are going to find in Texas – the real Zebra at Smith’s Point is still the most bizarre encounters I’ve had. Didn’t see it standing there a short distance to my right. Was panning to the right after a bird and the next thing I know there’s a black and white creature filling up my entire view. Makes our travels that more intriguing! Thanks for dropping in Sandra!
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