Birds of the Rio Grande and other riparian habitats of Western Webb County, Texas

Abstract

We conducted 164 diurnal morning point counts in 1997 and 89 nocturnal point counts in 1998 along the Rio Grande and at other riparian habitats on remote ranchland in northwestern Webb County. We subsequently conducted 94 diurnal morning and 37 nocturnal point counts in 1999 on public lands along the Rio Grande and at other riparian habitats at Laredo, Webb County. From these systematic surveys (n
384) and other irregular visits to sites during the length of the study, we detected a total of 209 bird species. Many species (97) are distributed widely over much of North America, but substantial numbers of species were also of primarily eastern (30), western (30), southwestern (26), and tropical (26) distributions. Fifty-five of the 209 species (26%) occur on >1 species priority lists in six bird conservation plans that we reviewed, but only four of these were tropical species. This suggests that tropical species, the driving force behind ecotourism-sustained economies in southern Texas, may not benefit directly from recent bird conservation plans, since their lists of priority species do not include many tropical birds. Thus, conservation projects designed to benefit primarily tropical species will not be ranked highly for funding if evaluated on the basis of the bird conservation plans we reviewed.