Last Day's Birding

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We decided to spend the last birding day of the year at Brazoria NWR with Carlos and Macarena Aguilar and two friends of theirs from Colorado. The reason for choosing Brazoria was partly because it's always reliable for birds and partly to see how it is recovering from Hurricane Ike.

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It was very windy, and signs at the visitor center warned us not to expect many birds: Ike had pushed 8' of water over the site, destroying vegetation and eliminating most of the invertebrates that many birds feed on. Visitors were advised to go to San Bernard NWR, which is apparently much birdier.

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The site certainly wasn't looking its best - the pond near the visitor center was in particularly bad condition - and it didn't have any large flocks. However, we found there were still plenty of species around.

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The birding started before we entered the site, with good views of a Clapper Rail by the roadside. The track to the Salt Lake then had an Osprey, which we saw later in several other areas.

Osprey

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The same track had its usual pair of Crested Caracaras, one of which let us watch it from only 10' away.

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Crested Caracara

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Although there were no geese, we saw Blue- and Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintail, Mottled Duck and Northern Shoveler, as well as four species of gulls and terns and five types of shorebirds.

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Northern Shoveler

Herons and egrets were few and far between but this Snowy Egret and Tricolored Heron were hanging out in the pond at the visitor center.

Snowy Egret (left) and Tricolored Heron

Northern Harriers seemed to be everywhere but never close enough to photograph. The only shot I got was this one of a Harrier scaring up a couple of Blue-winged Teal.

So Brazoria may have suffered badly from Ike but we still had a very enjoyable visit. We ended up with a list of 43 species.