Wood Duck
Back 25 to 30 years ago I saw a picture of a Wood Duck in Texas Highways magazine and hankered to see one in the flesh. Today I did, at Lubbock's Leroy Elmore Park, thanks to the Llano Estacado Audubon Society and Kayakqueen's online report.
I went late in the day and saw only one male, on the far side of the island, and got distant photos while hiding behind a tree. Will post them, insh'allah, if I can get my computer to work.
We are seeing here on iNat that species range maps are often out of date and on the South Plains / Llano Estacado / Caprock are species not supposed to be here. So it is with my two observations of what turned out to be Red-Shouldered Hawks (seen also by Amzapp recently and perhaps by others), with several plant and insect species, and to a lesser degree with Wood Ducks.
Observations
Photos / Sounds
What
Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus)Observer
thebarkDescription
Saw this hawk flying from plce to place dangling its prey, what looked like a dove. Kept flying off to another tree before I got my camera in focus. This was all I got.
Comments
There are a LOT of gripes about avian species range maps being ridiculously wrong, but nobody can or knows how to or wants to fix them. The response from admins is to ignore the range maps.
So there you have it. You might find ebird maps more useful, you can date-filter and so forth. And the birders keep it super up-to-date!
Jane put together a tutorial on creating range maps here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#ranges
As you can see, it can be time intensive.
Any curator has access to update the range maps on iNat. If anyone wants me to upload their range map to replace an out-of-date or just-plain-wrong iNat range map, you can email a KML file to me at cassisaari@gmail.com
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