Mute Swan, Yes – But, Austin, TX, December 2016

On December’s monthly trip to Houston my travels required me to take a 1-day side-trip to the Austin area.  I remembered from my past eBird Needs Alerts that Mute Swans are regularly reported in the Austin area, but since I don’t usually get to Austin I had never researched those sightings.  With just a bit of time on eBird I found quite a number of Mute Swan reports in Austin, most on the Colorado River as it passes through downtown.  I would have only a limited amount of time to squeeze in a try for this new statebird, but it looked like my chances were pretty good.

But before I got too excited about pursuing a possible new TX statebird, I needed to figure out if these birds would be “countable”.  The eBird records included birds being seen somewhat regularly in multiple Austin locations back to the early 2000’s, and in some cases to the 1990s.  So even if these birds were from an introduced population, they seemed to be part of a local population that was self-sustaining.  And in fact several records included reports of nesting and immatures.  So I thought I was safe.

Now I needed to figure out which location might give me the best shot at finding the Swans given my limited time window.  Although most locations were in the downtown area, perhaps the most reliable birds were those reported a bit upstream in the Tarrytown portion of Austin at an eBird hotspot called Laguna Gloria.  Recently there were nearly daily reports on eBird from this site with up to 3 individuals, including one immature. 

Now for the micro-directions.  The location of the Laguna Gloria hotspot was shown to be land not a wetland or waterway.  It was a peninsula with the Colorado River to the west and a quiet bay to the east.  Since “laguna” in Spanish is “lagoon”, I thought that the Swans were being seen in the “lagoon” to the east of the peninsula.  But the hotspot was the actual peninsula, not either waterway.  So then I checked notes included in recent posts, and found these remarks – “family pulled out on boat ramp”, “family off peninsula”, “family along peninsula”, and “family in laguna on bank”.  Although only one indicated the birds were in the lagoon, I decided to make that spot the focus of my search.

After a long early morning drive from Houston I finally pulled into Laguna Gloria.  I had about an hour before I had to get to work, so I was happy to be chasing after big white swimming birds that should be easy to find.  The peninsula was actually home to an art school, with a number of buildings, sculptures, and trails through some nice woodland habitat.  I quickly found a trail heading toward the lagoon, and soon was at the water’s edge fully expecting to find the Swans.  But no such luck.  So I headed a bit farther down the trail to get a different view, but still no Swans.  A couple minutes later I made it to the southern tip of the peninsula for my last view of the lagoon, but again no Swans.

As I headed back to my car, I started to wonder if I was on the wrong side of the peninsula.  After all I never did find a boat ramp that was mentioned in the one post.  If these birds were so prevalent at this spot, I had a feeling that the art school staff might be aware of them.  So I went into the main building and asked if they were familiar with the Swans.  Although both people I asked had seen them, neither could suggest where to look. 

I was starting to run out of time and needed to come up with a revised gameplan very quickly.  Maybe they were tucked in a portion of the lagoon that wasn’t visible from my vantage points.  Certainly possible.  But I thought the most likely answer was that the birds were in the river and not in the lagoon.  As I walked out of the school building I could see the river below to the west, so I decided to head in that direction.  And within a few seconds I noticed a Swan in the distance.  With a quick view in my binocs I confirmed an adult Mute Swan, and then found an immature a few feet away.  Two “swans a swimming” so to speak.  And a short distance upstream I found what was likely the boat ramp mentioned in the eBird post.  I guess I should have started looking in the river rather than the lagoon after all.  And despite the longer search than I expected I still made it to work with plenty of time to spare. 

Normally I close my blog posts with an update on my list for that state and a statebird map.  Unfortunately that’s not the case here.  It turns out that as I did a bit of research to write this post I checked the official TX statelist and alas Mute Swan isn’t even on the list.  So that means not only are the Austin birds not countable, but no Mute Swan anywhere in TX has ever been countable.  Ugh…  Not the first time I’ve lost a possible statebird due to decisions by the TX rare bird committee – I had to retroactively remove Tropical Mockingbird (seen in May 2012) and Striped Sparrow (seen in Feb. 2015) off my list after the committee decided they were not countable.  At least the Mute Swan wasn’t a possible lifebird.