Readers’ wildlife photos

Karen Bartelt is back with some lovely bird photos; her text and IDs are indented:

In early November, my husband and I took a birding/”lepping” trip to the southern tip of Texas, travelling from S. Padre island through Brownsville, and along the border to just south of Laredo.  It’s a surreal region, with many miles of border wall, and it would not be an exaggeration to say we saw 100 Border Patrol vehicles in the space of a week.  And it was over 90 degrees every day. I’ve been trying to figure out how to organize these photos, and decided to start with the eastern end of the trip and go west.  Here are some photos from the South Padre Island Birding Center.

This green jay (Cyanocorax yncas) was at our B&B.  They were common throughout this part of Texas:

White ibis (Eudocimus albus) at the Briding center boardwalk:

American wigeon (Anas americana):

Northern pintail couple (Anas acuta):

Roseate spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) with a jealous common gallinule (Gallinula galeata) looking on:

Mottled duck (Anas fulvigula).  Mottled ducks have a black spot at the base of the beak, but they also interbreed with mallards, so this may possibly be a “muddled duck”, a hybrid.

Snowy egret (Egretta thula):