Birding the Bay: Part 1

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As the weather was good this weekend, we headed down to Texas City on Saturday morning to meet up with some friends and, hopefully, to see Common Loons, shorebirds and some different ducks.

A drive along the dike was rather disappointing, yielding mainly Herring, Ring-billed and Laughing Gulls, some Forster's Terns and a few Sanderlings. 
 

 

 

However, we did see three Common Loons, one of which came close enough for reasonable photos.

The area where the dike joins the mainland had more gulls, along with a couple of Royal Terns. It was odd to see Great-tailed Grackles and Rock Doves/Pigeons wading with gulls.

 

A Willet was prowling in the shallows.

Willets are very drab birds - until they unfold their wings!

Apart from Willets, the only shorebirds we spotted were half-a-dozen Ruddy Turnstones.

The area also had several Brown Pelicans, a couple of which allowed me to approach within a few feet.

After an hour at the dike we drove the short distance to the Texas City Bay Street Park, where we had a picnic lunch. As I will show in my next post, the park had quite a range of birds even though it didn't add to my year list.
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