Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken.

—John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” 1817

It’s high noon on a sizzling spring day in South Texas.  A veil of humidity hangs in the air, nearly obscuring rows of Texas ebony trees.  The brushy trees with dark green crowns line a path at Quinta Mazatlan.  “Quinta,” as this urban sanctuary in McAllen, Texas, is known to locals, is less than 15 miles from the Mexican border and just minutes from McAllen-Miller International Airport.

Article by Cheryl Lyn Dybas Photos by Ilya Raskin

It might as well be a world away. 

The stunning 1930s Spanish hacienda was once a private estate; several years ago, it became an environmental education center.  Tropical gardens are surrounded by native Lower Rio Grande Valley thorn forest – home to birds in every color of the rainbow.  Including our quarry: the painted bunting (Passerina ciris), known as North America’s most beautiful bird for the male’s shimmering palette of blue, green, yellow and red iridescent feathers.

“Almost every birder who comes to South Texas has painted buntings at the top of his or her list,” says Tim Brush, an ornithologist at the nearby University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas, and author of the book Nesting Birds of a Tropical Frontier: The Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas.  Brush is kindly acting as a guide to the region’s birds.  “That doesn’t mean they’re easy to find, however.”

Quinta is our second stop of the morning, following a pre-dawn start at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park about 15 miles away.  Although bright orange Altamira orioles put on a show at the park, flying into and out of distinctive U-shaped, hanging nests just yards above, no painted bunting graced us with its presence.

Painted bunting on the horizon

But our luck is about to change.

In the Lower Rio Grande Valley, famed for its migrating songbirds, “painted buntings are common migrants but uncommon breeders,” says Brush.  “Their numbers vary from year to year, with more birds seen and heard in wetter years.”

With this spring’s intermittent showers, where are the buntings? 

“Usually I’ll hear a male working his way along a forest edge,” says Brush, “singing regularly in an attempt to attract a female.  I’ve heard them this year, so they’re here somewhere.”

As if on cue, he points to a feeding station that’s stocked with seeds and fruits such as orange halves.  At what’s called the Amphitheatre along Quinta’s Wooded Meadow Trail, Brush lifts his binoculars to peer at a sparrow-sized bird with crown-to-tail lime green plumage.  “It’s a female painted bunting,” says Brush, looking around for a male.  Lovely as the female might be, to those spotting a painted bunting for the first time, the male is still the Holy Grail.

But a male wasn’t to be, at least at Quinta. 

Dancing butterfly

That evening, it was time to read up on painted buntings.  The next day would bring new attempts to find a male painted bunting at other Lower Rio Grande Valley sites.

The Lower Rio Grande Valley includes four Texas counties – Starr, Hidalgo, Willacy and Cameron.  Quinta Mazatlan and Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park are in Hidalgo County.  The climate is subtropical, with rainfall across this coastal plain region sporadic. 

Land-clearing for ranching, agriculture and urbanization have resulted in the loss of more than 95 percent of the Lower Rio Grande Valley’s habitat, according to a report by The Nature Conservancy of Texas.

Where in the remaining five percent should one search for painted buntings?   

During spring and fall migration and in winter, it’s best to look for them where seeds are abundant, such as in weedy fields or near birdfeeders, according to Brush.  In summer, they’re most likely in edge habitat with dense understory. 

The species’ chip call and the rambling songs of males may give the birds away.  “Patience might be necessary,” understates the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology website allaboutbirds.org.  “However, the wait will be worth it when you finally spot this gem, surely one of North America’s finest songbirds.”

Painted buntings’ habit of remaining in deep brush often causes them to be overlooked.  “When the brightly colored male is finally noticed, people often think he’s an escaped tropical bird,” says Brush.

A coveted bird

Painted buntings are declining throughout their range as a result of habitat loss, parasitism of their nests by cowbirds, and trapping on their wintering grounds south of the border for use in the pet trade, where their extraordinary colors have made them coveted finds.  They’re often caught and sold illegally as cage birds, especially in Mexico and the Caribbean.

In the early 19^th century, thousands of male painted buntings were trapped and shipped to Europe for sale.  The trade was banned in the U.S. in the early 20^th century, but is still legal in certain countries.  An estimated 700 painted buntings were sold within a few days in May, 2003, at a single location in Cuba, according to scientists Connie Herr and John Klicka of the University of Nevada and Paul Sykes, Jr., of the University of Georgia.  Writing in the July, 2011, issue of the journal Conservation Genetics, the biologists reported that 100,000 painted buntings may have been trapped in Mexico between 1984 and 2000.

Decades earlier, ornithologist Arthur Cleveland Bent wrote in his Life Histories of North American Birds that when it comes to describing “the avian gem we know as the painted bunting, Spanish seems more appropriate [than English], because in Spanish it is ‘mariposa’: ‘butterfly.’  This bird, in its dazzling brilliance, seems hardly a creature of feathers at all, but rather a dancing butterfly.

“No other North American species is so brightly colored,” continued Bent.  “There is no blending of shades whatever, the different hues are as sharply defined as if they were cut by a straight edge.  No wonder many people seeing it for the first time can scarcely credit their eyes, because nothing else approaches it.  For flaming, jewel-like radiance, the nonpareil, as  we know it in the South, literally fulfills the name: it is ‘without an equal.’”

Two painted buntings?

Today we know that there are in fact two painted buntings: an eastern and a western subspecies. 

The eastern painted bunting (Passerina ciris ciris) breeds in the coastal southeastern U.S. from North Carolina south to Florida.  Eastern birds usually spend their winters in southern Florida, including the Keys, the Bahamas and Cuba.    

Western painted buntings (Passerina ciris pallidior), the birds of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, nest from Texas and Louisiana north to Kansas and Oklahoma and west to Arizona and New Mexico.  Western painted buntings flock to west Mexico for the winter.

Oddly, it seems, the two subspecies never mix.  Eastern painted buntings appear to remain on their side of an imaginary line, while western painted buntings do the same, on both breeding and wintering grounds.

But first one has to locate them.

To find a (male) painted bunting

Somewhere out there is a male painted bunting. Breeding Bird Atlas routes in the Texas coastal plain have some of the highest painted bunting abundances of any such courses in the U.S.

Off to the search: a drive to the far reaches of Starr County, with its seemingly endless farm fields of sunflowers.  Their yellow heads bend upward toward something yet taller: wind turbines erected in the fields.  The turbines are part of a 200-megawatt wind farm that funnels most of its power to Austin, 300 miles to the north.  Residents have mixed views about the wind farm, owned by Duke Energy.  Some say it’s a blight on the landscape and may threaten migrating birds, others that it’s an economic necessity.

Another turn, and a bumpy road nine miles west of McCook leads to a 300-acre wildlife sanctuary: Santa Clara Ranch.  Owned by physician Beto Gutierrez, Santa Clara offers birders and photographers access to two morning-light and two evening-light “dugout” blinds near small waterholes, as well as an above-ground blind for raptors. 

“The ranch is located on virgin land,” says Gutierrez as he sets up a folding chair in one of the afternoon blinds.  “That’s what attracts so many native and migrating species.”  He listens for a minute, then says, “hear that?  It’s a male painted bunting singing from the top of one of the bushes out front.”  Gutierrez says that 3 p.m. is when painted buntings seem to emerge from the shadows.  It’s now 3:08.

A whir of fluttering wings, a blur of color, and – finally! – a rainbow-hued bird lands alongside a nearby waterhole.  Dipping its head into the pond again and again, the male painted bunting takes a bath, throwing water in every direction.  Droplets catch the sun, turning the bunting an even brighter lime green, indigo blue, scarlet red and citrine yellow. 

“Every birder and photographer who comes here wants a painted bunting first and foremost,” says Gutierrez, as the bird continues to splash in the waterhole.  The bunting is likely cooling off, he says, on a hot day with temperatures well into the 90s.

The next day and a few miles from Santa Clara, painted buntings would again emerge from the treeline.  The twin estates Campos Viejos and Dos Venadas, owned by rancher Hardy Jackson and veterinarian Steve Bentsen, also offer guests the opportunity to see and photograph birds and other wildlife during spring migration season.  Campos Viejos covers 1,000 acres of native Texas habitat; Dos Venadas, 370 acres.    

“Most people visit in April and May,” says Jackson.  “It gets pretty hot by June.  But Campos Viejos and Dos Venadas can be at their best then.  Everything dries out and the birds and other wildlife are constantly at the waterholes.  For some animals, our waterholes are their only sources of drinking water.”

Hoping to outrun rainclouds on the horizon, Jackson escorts visitors from a dugout morning blind to a smorgasbord lunch at the lodge, then to an above-ground afternoon blind perched near a waterhole.  Once again, 3 p.m. is the hour of the painted bunting.  Sprinkles of rain dot the pond’s surface.  Jackson is almost ready to call it a day when the sweet notes of a painted bunting drift from a bush mere feet away.

An ornithological treat softly lands at the water’s edge, then hops in, the better to clean Texas dust from its feathers.  Red and green, blue and yellow are reflected in the pond. 

“We hope the birds and other wildlife will be here for decades to come,” says Bentsen, who is concerned about the wind farm and its effects.  “The real fly in the ointment, though, is that there simply isn’t enough water to support the kind of growth that’s looming.  The prediction is for the human population of Texas to double in the next 40 to 50 years.  Ultimately, water is going to be a huge issue.”

For now, however, the Texas coastal plain hums with life in riotous color.

Award-winning science journalist and ecologist Cheryl Lyn Dybas, a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Writers, has brought a passion for wildlife and conservation toNational Geographic,  Natural History, National Wildlife, BBC Wildlife, Yankee, Scientific American and many other publications, and is a Field Editor at Ocean Geographic. Eye-to-eye with the wild is her favorite place to be. 

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This piece was edited and posted onto SEVENSEAS Media by: Giacomo Abrusci