By G. Frank Oatman, Travis Audubon Board President in the early 60s

Let me tell you of the day John and Rose Ann Rowlett and I found and confirmed a very rare Red Phalarope at the Travis County Sewage Ponds – notoriously confirmed by John swimming to capture the bird alive. That was on the afternoon of September 15, 1963, four years after I discovered the Sewage Ponds for birders.

I quote from the October 1963 article in ‘The Signal Smoke,’ newsletter then of the Travis Audubon Society, edited at that time by the same three “Eager Beavers” (the two Rowletts, brother and sister, and G. Frank Oatman) as mentor Edgar B. Kincaid, Jr. had dubbed us. We three wrote the ‘Signal Smoke’ article from which I quote: “The afternoon of September 15 found us at the Sewage Ponds,” when “we noticed two phalaropes swimming close together in the center of the largest pond. We immediately recognized that they were quite dark-backed and generally had the appearance of Northern Phalaropes; but one of the birds was obviously much larger than the other. During the next hour of close scrutiny from the bank, we became more and more suspicious of that larger, grayer, stouter-billed phalarope. At last suspicious grew into near conviction;” [that the bird was, very rare in Texas, a Red Phalarope] “and since a ‘sanitary’ reputation is worth even more points among birders than an eager one, we knew we must prove our potentially dangerous suspicion.” We youngsters had never seen a Red Phalarope before and feared
we’d be disbelieved.

We’d read that some Native Americans knew how to swim, head only above the water, to closely approach and then grab water birds by their feet. The theory was that birds took a slowly approaching head for a fellow duck or other water bird. Lacking in those early days rare and expensive cameras with telephoto lenses, we decided one of us should try it. I, Frank the eldest, found a dry plant stalk and created two longer and one short piece which I held. Rose Ann drew first, a longer piece, and then John drew the short stalk, meaning it was his to try.

In those early days, almost never was there anyone but us at the Ponds. I quote from our ‘Signal Smoke’ article again. “So John stripped to his underwear and went after the phalarope in its own element. John’s slowly moving head must have looked like a duck, for the two phalaropes showed virtually no alarm at his approach. They simply swam slowly away, keeping just beyond arm’s length. After about 40 minutes of dog-paddling, John was inches closer. He reached slowly upward beneath the bird and – and he had it!”

Happily, the Red Phalarope (we were now nearly certain) was remarkably calm in the hand, never trying to fly, never struggling in fact. We drove straight from the Sewage Ponds to the home of bird expert Fred S. Webster and his birder wife Marie. From there (Fred agreeing it was indeed the rarity we thought) we phoned top expert Edgar Kincaid and a birder whom we knew had good camera gear, Marianne McClendon. Giving those persons time to drive to the Webster’s, Frank drove John quickly to the nearby home of Frank’s parents, where the swimmer took a thorough shower and then dressed in fresh clothes Frank loaned him.

Red Phalarope by Marianne McClendon, 1963.

Edgar made careful measurements of the phalarope (a female in nonbreeding plumage), and then or the next morning Marianne took record photographs, the bird putting up with this quite calmly, either in the hand or in the little metal cage someone provided. By that time it was getting dark, so the Rowletts and I decided to keep the bird in the little cage overnight. Keepers John and Rose Ann gave it flaked fish and water, both of which it took quite readily. We returned to the Sewage Ponds early the next morning and released the Red Phalarope (from the shore this time) into the pond in which John had captured it. It swam straight away to the still-present Northern Phalarope and resumed circling and feeding with it. Equally happily, John suffered naught but some teasing from his swim. But when John came down with Hepatitis B some 10 years later, “It must have been those Sewage Ponds,” John joked.

Fred Webster was the regional editor of Audubon Field Notes then, that journal reporting several times a year on birds found all over the country. So in the next issue of those, our Red Phalarope record appeared in Fred’s South Texas section, stating
that the species was extremely rare anywhere in inland Texas. It was of course the first record for Travis County. The record is correctly sited in the ‘Detailed Account’ and its ‘Texas’ subsection on the species on page 368 of The Bird Life of Texas, the
two-volume then definitive work on its subject published in 1973, with the book’s Senior Editor Edgar B. Kincaid, Jr. overseeing specialized work by subeditors John L. Rowlett, Rose Ann Rowlett, and G. Frank Oatman.

Featured image: Red Phalarope by Marianne McClendon, 1963.