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On Saturday morning we made our first visit for months to Sheldon Lake.
A walk along the boardwalk turned up only a few Swamp Sparrows, all too quickly gone to photograph. As compensation, the garden near the first pond had a very obliging Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, which let me walk along beside it for several yards.
It turned out to be just the first of eight Gnatcatchers that we came across that morning.
The ponds on the south side were empty of birds except for a Tricolored Heron and a juvenile Little Blue Heron.
The trees along the trail had several small flocks of American Robins and Cedar Waxwings. The Waxwigs were feasting on berries.
There was only one bird in the north ponds but it was a good one: an American Bittern. It took me a while to notice it among the reeds.
Unfortunately, it stayed too far away for good photos.
On our way out of the park we came across our first Cattle Egret of the year.
Before heading home we drove down to the boat launch at the south end of Pineland Road, where I did a quick walk along the bank in search of Anhingas. There was one but it was too far away for photos. Luckily, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet was much closer and paused its flitting long enough for me to get a decent picture.
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After our trip to Utah it was certainly a change to come back to birding in Texas.
Our first Texas birding trip of the summer was a brief visit to Sheldon Lake State Park, which you now have to drive into via the entrance on Garrett Road.
There is a huge field on the west side of the entrance road and on this occasion it was covered in birds. There were scores of White Ibis. Some were young birds.
Others were full adults.
A few Cattle and Snowy Egrets were grazing with the Ibis. So too were several Black-bellied Whistling Ducks. (You certainly know you're back in Texas when you see BBWDs!)
It was more surprising to see that a dozen or so Little Blue Herons were mixed in among the other grazing birds.
Down at the Environmental Center ponds there was much less activity. The ponds did look beautiful, though, because many of them were covered in water lilies.
The most common birds around the ponds were Yellow-crowned Night Herons.
Although I searched in vain for Green Herons, we came across a couple of Great Blue Herons and Tricolored Herons.
We also spotted a young alligator skulking in one of the ponds.
After visiting Sheldon, we drove over to Aweigh Drive in Crosby to look for the Swallow-tailed Kites that summer there. Unfortunately, we didn't arrive until late morning, by which time the Kites had dispersed from their roosting sites. So in the end we had to settle for just a quick view of a single (distant) Kite.
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Sunday morning we drove down to visit the Baytown Nature Center on our first birding trip since returning from the Rio Grande Valley. I was sure we would see a reasonable selection of shorebirds and several species of large wading birds, such as herons.
I was wrong about the shorebirds. An hour's visit turned up only two Yellowlegs and three Willets. I was wrong about the wading birds, too. We saw perhaps 80 large waders but, except for a single Tricolored Heron, they were all of just three species.
Great Egrets were everywhere - in trees, on the ground, in the ponds and in the air.
Snowy Egrets were common, too.
In several areas both egret species were hanging out together.
However, the most numerous waders were White Ibis.
Other birds were also surprisingly scarce, although we did get to admire a couple of Ospreys.
As the birding was so (comparatively) poor at Baytown, we didn't picnic there but instead headed up to Sheldon Lake. Unfortunately, perhaps because it was now early afternoon, birds were even more scarce there than they had been at Baytown.
I walked the trail past the ponds, where the only bird on the water was an American Coot.
I had slightly better luck at the final pond. It's a reliable spot for finding Yellow-crowned Night Herons and, sure enough, there were three perched by the water.
Having largely dipped on birds at Baytown and Sheldon Lake, we decided that it wasn't a good day for birding and headed back home.
P.S.
This weekend we're heading over to High Island and Galveston. It's probably too early for there to be many migrants but northerly winds forecast for Saturday may cause some birds to stop at the coast. Failing this, we should at least get to see some nesting activity in the High Island rookery and a good selection of shorebirds and terns on Bolivar.
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Sunday morning I set off early and in gloomy weather to visit a couple of sites of the east side of Houston.
I started off at the Kathryn J. Whitmore Preserve. As I couldn't see any trails into the preserve, I just stayed for a while and birded from the road. Lincoln's Sparrows were foraging along the verge, Blue-winged Teal were paddling around and a Belted Kingfisher was fishing from a utility wire. Male Red-winged Blackbirds (below) were singing and displaying.
A Little Blue Heron was posing by the edge of the water.
My next stop was Sheldon Lake Environmental Center, always a pleasant site to walk around.
Perhaps because of the weather, birds were fairly scarce except for Yellow-crowned Night Herons.
I'm not sure how many I saw - at least 15 and maybe more. Unfortunately, most of them were standing in places where they were partially obscured by branches.
While I was photographing the Heron above, I noticed an alligator was keeping a close eye on me.
A Giant Swallowtail was a pleasant surprise, even if it was looking rather the worse for wear.
I looked carefully around all the ponds and on several trails but I wasn't able to find a single Black-crowned Night Heron. However, just as I was leaving, I finally got a clear shot of a Yellow-crowned Night Heron.
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Yesterday morning I dragged Dee out to do a couple of hours birding in cold and windy weather, mainly because I wanted to add some more species to my 2013 list for Harris County.
Our first stop was at Sheldon Lake, where we almost immediately saw an American Bittern flying from side to side of the first fishing pond. Other new birds that we turned up on our walk around the Environmental Center area were Anhinga, Double-crested Cormorant, Laughing Gull and Snow Geese (below).
We decided to move on to Baytown Nature Center as several interesting birds had been reported from there during the past few days.
The wind was blowing hard as we drove towards the fishing pier at the end of the road. On the way we passed several Brown Pelicans, a Belted Kingfisher, a Mallard and a Snowy Egret.
The water was rough on the bay and all that I could see from the pier were a couple of hundred Lesser Scaup and a score or so Ruddy Ducks, all too far away to photograph.
We drove back and parked near the hummingbird garden, from where we watched an Osprey kiting as it fished the choppy waters.
Other birders had spotted Eared and Horned Grebes but the only grebes we saw were two Pied-billed Grebes. However, they were accompanied by a Common Goldeneye (below), another new bird for 2013.
As neither of us likes cold weather, we left Bayiown after only 30 minutes and headed home. It hadn't been the most pleasant or productive of outings but we had seen a few good birds and I had boosted my year list from 82 to 93 species.
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