A Now Show

HARLINGEN — Birding is like fishing, Alfredo Moreno said.

“Just because you go fishing doesn’t mean you’re going to catch something. Well, when you go birding it doesn’t mean you’re going to see all the birds you want,” Moreno said.

Moreno, from Downey, Calif., was one of about 30 birders who took the trip to King Ranch to scout for birds Thursday. The King Ranch tour was one of the many field trips offered during the 14th Annual Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival.

On this occasion the birders were out to see the ferruginous pygmy owl, which stands only about 4 ½ inches tall.

Tom Langschied, tour guide and coordinator for the South Texas wintering birds project at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, led the birders to the Tate windmill, where he said pygmy owls were first spotted on the ranch in the 1960s.

But after scouting the area, and three other areas all morning, birders were not able to check off the owl on their lists.

However, they were not disappointed with the trip and all the other birds they did see.

“The trip was good but it could’ve been better if we had seen the pygmy owl,” Langschied said. “We saw other birds that were good like the Audubon’s oriole, the eastern screech owl and the northern beardless tyrannulet.”

Birders also saw an orange-crowned warbler, black-crested titmouse, long-billed thrasher, northern mockingbird, red-tailed hawk, lesser yellowlegs, ladder-backed woodpecker, vermilion flycatcher, eastern phoebe and many others.

Dot Bamach, from Savannah, Ga., said although she would have liked to have seen the pygmy owl, she’s been birding long enough to know you can’t always see them all.

“That happens if you do this long enough,” Bamach said. “They’re not trained and they’re not in cages.”

Bamach, who helps to run a birding festival in Georgia, said this is the first time she’s attended the RGV Birding Festival. She said she is happy to see that the residents and leaders of Harlingen understand that nature habitats bring an economic boost to the area.

Bamach also said birds are beautiful and festivals are fun.

“It’s like a treasure hunt,” she said. “You try to see how many things you can find.”