Jan 14, 2020 - the most remarkable morning in 18 years of running bird surveys at Rice University in Houston, TX. Today was supposed to be our official Rice - Houston Audubon bird survey, a program we launched last year. We survey Rice campus on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month as religiously as possible, except that early this morning it was pouring rain, the leftovers from a moderate cold front that passed through the day before. I had the bad feeling that nobody would show up because of the rain, but being one of the co-leaders with Stuart Nelson, I had to be out there rain or shine as it was too late this morning to call it off. The weather radar showed that the rain might just stop by 730 AM in the morning, so I was hopeful.
Upon arriving at Harris Gully, I expected to find nobody out there, but sure enough, Janet Neath was already there, ready to take her chances with the rain! She mentioned that others had decided not come out, but she was ready to go. I wasn't too optimistic given the rain, but we hung around the parking lot waiting for others to arrive just in case. While I was showing her this new contraption I made for protecting one's binoculars in the rain, we see Stuart Nelson walking towards from across the field. Then a new participant, a student named Sarah Preston, arrived. Shortly thereafter, Annie Xu, another student who had been on a couple of birdwalks showed up. And just like that, when I thought it was just going to be me, we had a team, and just like that, the rain magically stopped. It was wet and the clouds were hanging low, enshrouding the tall buildings of the medical center across the street. I felt like I was in San Francisco with the fog rolling in.
We walked over to the brush pile, where I had thrown some seed a few days before. As often happens on rainy days, the moment there is a clear window, the birds come out and start feeding like crazy. We had a remarkable show of sparrows hopping around the brush pile. Four Lincoln's Sparrows, 2 Field Sparrows, and 6 Chipping Sparrows all in the same field of view. Goldfinches were flying about. In the background, we could hear a Swamp Sparrow calling from the cattails. A Sedge Wren called, followed by a Marsh Wren and then a House Wren. These background birds of course didn't show for us, but Stuart and I noted that the brush pile sparrows were being more cooperative than normal, a perfect opportunity for beginning birders Annie and Sarah to study them.
After the sparrows, I suggested we walk over to the thickets in Harris Gully, closer to the power plant. A drenched mockingbird popped up. Some White-winged Doves flew over. We looked towards the medical center buildings hoping to see the Peregrine Falcons that occasionally sit up on top of the St Luke's twin towers. All of a sudden Annie Xu spots a bird flying high above Main Street, passing by the Methodist hospital and asks what is that. We look up. And what we see is a large, fast flying bird with long stiff wings with rapid wingbeats. Brown head, brown uppersides, long pointed tail, immaculate white underparts with a sharp demarcation with the brown chest. And a longish, somewhat conical bill with a flat head. There is only one thing this could be. A Brown Booby! Needless to say, there lots of expletives that came out of my mouth as this is what I would call a mega, particularly in an inland area, particularly for Rice University. This is a bird of the open seas, a pelagic bird that nests down in the tropics. In recent years, they have strayed northwards with a few being seeing every year along the coast, but to see one in the middle of downtown was simply crazy.
The craziness lasted no more than 5 seconds as the bird flew around the Methodist hospital building and disappeared. Thankfully, we all saw it but if you blinked, you missed it. Miraculously, I managed to get three blurry photos of the bird as it turned around the building. I mentioned that we should keep watching the building because for some odd reason, when raptors fly up the Methodist hospital, they often keep circling it, hugging the windows of the building. Sure enough the bird popped out again from the other side! It then circled the building a couple times, during which I was able to get better photos and video, now that we had some time to calm down. The bird even landed on top of the parking garage for short time. We all got amazing views of the bird.
At about this time, Janet, Stuart and I started calling and texting people we knew that might be in the area. Janet texted Barbara Stern, who had at the last minute decided not to come on the walk because of the rains. I called John O'Brien, a hard core birder that I overlapped with back in my California days, but like me, found himself as a professor in Houston. He was driving into work at the medical center and coming up to Main Street, so I was giving real time direction on the booby's flight path, going something along the lines of: "John, we just had it flying south on Main towards the St Luke's towers. Wait! now it's turning back. It just flew behind the Marriott. Damn. It disappeared. Did you see it?" The bird would periodically disappear into the fog, and then mysteriously reappear. John eventually found himself on Rice campus scanning the buildings, "John, we see it coming around the Methodist again." And sure enough, he got to see it too. The bird disappeared again and soon our team was joined by John. The booby reappeared, flew north towards Hermann Park, circled around over Rice airspace a few times. By this time, Barbara Stern had arrived and it had gone quiet. There is nothing worse than arriving 1 minute after the bird was seen, but thankfully, the bird reappeared once again and Barbara saw it.
This booby circled around the area for 30-40 minutes before it flew out of sight and we all had to go back to work. I had to hightail down to Galveston for a Gordon Research Conference myself.
I cannot really describe how remarkable this event was. This bird was so out of place. We have recorded 226 species of birds on campus, an impressive number given how urban Rice is. Brown Booby made 227, but it was never on the list of birds we ever expected to see on campus. We have seen some very unusual birds on campus, including Townsend's Warbler, Cassin's Vireo, Bell's Vireo, Swallow-tailed Kite, Zone-tailed Hawk, Roseate Spoonbill, Wood Stork, Dark-eyed Oregon Junco, Western Meadowlark, LeConte's, Grasshopper and Harris's Sparrows, but in some sense, all of these were predictable. Brown Booby never crossed our radar.
All this goes to show that the unexpected can happen. It also goes to show that the more eyes the better and that beginners can contribute just as well!
Now, the question is what was a Brown Booby doing in the middle of the 4th largest city in the country, circling skyscrapers. Well, it turns out, as remarkable as this sighting might be, perhaps it is not completely unprecedented. Richard Gibbons, the conservation director of Houston Audubon once had a Brown Booby flying down a freeway in Houston. And 4 years ago, during the Houston Christmas Bird count, a party of birders had one flying in downtown Houston. These were all split second sightings, never to be seen again. But all this makes me think that perhaps there is a pattern. Perhaps an occasional booby flies up Galveston bay, tries to make it out to sea, but gets disoriented. Instead of going back out to sea through the Galveston channel, it heads up one of the bayous. We occasionally have Brown Pelicans fly way up the bayous, even upstream of the medical center where the bayou is simply a concrete lined canal. Perhaps this booby was following the pattern exhibited by the Brown Pelicans, and perhaps the low lying clouds exacerbated its disoriented nature. A good friend of mine and a Rice birder, Tim Perkins, once had a Brown Pelican flying by the medical center and into Rice airspace! As to why this bird kept circling the medical center and in particular circled around the tall, all glass facade Methodist hospital is that it was seeing its reflection in the windows? Or perhaps it thought it was water? One will never know, but as I noted above, we have had hawks circle around and around the Methodist hospital, often close enough that their wings seem to just graze the building, and that was what the Brown booby was doing.
Below are some photos and videos of the Rice Brown Booby. The lesson today is always keep your eyes and ears open. Imagine if every person on this planet was watching the skies, looking at the flowers, listening to the bird calls, there is life everywhere, predictable and unpredictable. The other lesson is that rare birds show up in bad weather.
Lively story, love it.
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