Photo by Lee Wallace

Here’s the quarterly update to the “Big as Texas eBird Counties” spreadsheet for Summer 2025:

eBird’s taxonomy database is usually updated around the 3rd week of October, so the latest AOS changes are not included on this update.

Highlights and notes from the quarter from late May to early September

Added to the Texas list this quarter.

Cattle Tyrant was moved from Provisional status to full Verified species status.

• Review Species added to counties for the quarter.
  1. Wedge-tailed Shearwater: Aransas – https://ebird.org/checklist/S256866344
  2. Snail Kite: Fort Bend – https://ebird.org/checklist/S270989542
  3. Cattle Tyrant: Galveston – https://ebird.org/checklist/S266400453
  4. Gray Kingbird: Harris – https://ebird.org/checklist/S250835813
  5. Leach’s Storm-Petrel: Kenedy – https://ebird.org/checklist/S270944953
  6. Sooty Shearwater: Willacy – https://ebird.org/checklist/S244401379
• “Way out of range” county records:
  1. Bailey: White-eyed Vireo – https://ebird.org/checklist/S232501696
  2. Cochran: Tennessee Warbler & Black-throated Blue Warbler (early May) – https://ebird.org/checklist/S232664024
  3. Crosby: Swallow-tailed Kite – https://ebird.org/checklist/S263597149
  4. El Paso: Yellow-green Vireo – https://ebird.org/checklist/S246414006
  5. Franklin: Say’s Phoebe (late March) – https://ebird.org/checklist/S219681642
  6. Gonzales: Broad-tailed Hummingbird – https://ebird.org/checklist/S255994355
  7. Gray: Roseate Spoonbill – https://ebird.org/checklist/S251510920
  8. Haskell: White Ibis – https://ebird.org/checklist/S270750102
  9. Hudspeth: Wood Stock – https://ebird.org/checklist/S264033652
  10. Jeff Davis: Yellow-green Vireo – https://ebird.org/checklist/S269249110
  11. Johnson: Yellow-green Vireo – https://ebird.org/checklist/S260675857
  12. Jones: Great Kiskadee – https://ebird.org/checklist/S263872291
  13. Montgomery: Lesser Goldfinch – https://ebird.org/checklist/S247125718
  14. Potter:
      1. Broad-billed Hummingbird – https://ebird.org/checklist/S256932238
      2. Black-throated Blue Warbler – https://ebird.org/checklist/S251725874
  15. Tom Green: Royal Tern – https://ebird.org/checklist/S254937874
  16. Val Verde: Short-billed Dowitcher – https://ebird.org/checklist/S259941619
  17. Wise: Swallow-tailed Kite – https://ebird.org/checklist/S267915618
• Continuous work in obscure counties:
  1. Reagan: 5 species (Anthoney Hewetson & Sheri Anderson)
  2. Several historical records across multiple central Piney Woods counties: David Wolf
• Limpkin this quarter was added to Trinity Co.
• Species needed for just one county:
  1. Mallard: Medina
  2. Western Kingbird: Shelby
  3. Cedar Waxwing: Loving
  4. American Pipit: Hall
  5. Lark Sparrow: Newton
  6. Vesper Sparrow: Sabine
  7. Orchard Oriole: Castro
  8. Nashville Warbler: Moore
  9. Wilson’s Warbler: Franklin
• For the quarter (last 3 months) eBirders added 105 total county ticks starting at 74145 & ending at 74250.

Safe county birding!

I keep track of County Big Days. So if your random fall birding day is pretty big, maybe it will make it on the list on our Texas Century Club County Big Days page. Again I remind those of you who’d like, there’s a way to find your top county big days by downloading your data from eBird and upload it to Colton Robbins’ Birding Analytics browser app here:https://birdinganalytics.netlify.app/ It will spit out all your county top 3 big days, which you can compare to our County Big Day list at the Texas Century Club site, to see if it makes any of the Counties’ top 10.